BEECH ■•;';i:i;:''l«!v;.;ii;vv; *>.o: ym M^^mm:' tell-':'''' iiiill::::::v COPXRIGHr DEPOSIT. POSIT. f BEECHER as a Humorist SELECTIONS FROM THE PUBLISHED WORKS OF HENRY WARD BEECHER COMPILED BY ELEANOR KIRK EDITOR OF " THE BEECHER BOOK OF DAYS," " BEECHER CALENDAR," ETC. NEW YORK FORDS, HOWARD, AND HULBERT 1887 C(v>^ X. P5 10^^ CIO py ^ Copyright, 1887, By fords, HOWARD, AND HULBERT. •RAND AVERY COMPANY, ELECTROTYPERS AND PRINTERS, BOSTON. PREFACE. This volume was practically completed just before the spirit which animates it, and which had brought uplift and comfort and knowledge and wholesome mirth to so many hearts, had been called home. Then, for a time, the thought of giving to the world these laughter-provoking extracts seemed almost like a sacrilege. But soon a more healthful feeling prevailed. Why should the song cease be- cause the singer was gone ? Why should the help that comes from laughter be ended because the mu'th-making spirit had departed ? Nothing, certainl}', could be more out of har- mony with the teachings of the author than that. And so, like the flowers which, at his request, took the place of the usual trappings of woe, and caused every passer-by to think of new happiness in im- mortal gardens, this volume of laughter is sent abroad with the full faith that the great orator and teacher — the most spontaneous humorist that America has ever known — would, if he could speak to us, bid it God-speed. ELEANOR KIRK. Bbookltn, Juue, 18S7. iii' PUBLISHERS' NOTE. While Mr. Beecher's friends knew him as sun- shiny, genial, mirthful, the humor in his public min- istrations, whether secular or religious, was never fun for the sake of awakening " fool's laughter," — that easily kindled " crackling of thorns under a pot," — but was simply a part of himself, used as he believed the preacher should use every thing he could bring to bear in " catching men." He never, as he himself said, went out of his way to make a joke, or to avoid one ; when a thing presented itself to him in a ludicrous light he was likely to flash it at those whom he was addressing. The longer extracts, toward the close of this vol- ume, are more purely humorous, — the free play of his mirth, for its own enjoyment. The brief extracts are mostly taken from his spoken words, — sermons, lectures, etc., — and in each case the source is given, that the reader may have some hint of the general current of thought, from the surface of which these glancing ripples and bubbles have been caught. V "BEECHER ON CMIRTHFULNESS. A MAN who is himself full of benevolence, going out and walking through the day, comes back at night, and marvels that there is so much gold streaked through the rock of human life. He finds what he carries. He is susceptible to that which is strong in himself. A man who is mirthful will walk by Mr. Soberside, who never saw a humorous thing, and tvho toonders that his companion is perpetually cachinnating. Tlie sober man feels and sees nothing of it, but the mirthful man is sensitive to every thing grotesque in nature or among men. Children seem whimsiccd ; actions look ludicrous ; men's speeches tivine them- selves into odd combinations ; the mistakes that men commit, and the thousand suggestions and analogies, the likenesses and the contrasts, which are presented to the mind, take on attitudes corresponding to the feeling that is observing them, or show themselves in its light. Vli Vlll BEECHER ON MIRTHFULNESS. Life is full of amusement to an amusing man. Happy is he ivho Jias this faculty. It is more blessed than a garment in cold iveather. There is nothing that so covers the nerves^ there is nothing that so tempers anger and passion, there is nothing that is such a natural cure for discontent, there is nothing that brings men to such a companionable level, and creates such fellowship^ as the divine spirit of mirth. It is despised in the sanctuary, and nearly cast out ; though oftentimes it is of God, and leads us back to God, if it is not perverted. — Sermon : Malign Spiritual Influences. BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. Some people are so dry that you might soak them in a joke for a month, and it would not get through their skin. — Seumon : Christian Sympathy. How grateful ought we to be that God sends along, here and there, a natural heart-singer, — a man whose nature is large and luminous, and who, by his very car- riage and spontaneous actions, calms, cheers, and helps his fellows ! God bless the good-natured, for they bless everybody else ! — Eyes and Ears. ]\Ien will let you well-nigh scale them and skin them, if you will only make them laugh. There are many men who will not go into the Kingdom if you approach them soberly, but are quite willing if you weave a sunbeam-cord of mirth to draw them in by. — Sermon : Peaceableness. 1 2 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. "What are you laughing at now? You are as full of levity as flies are. Would you laugh if you was dying ? I really believe you would I To think of it I A deacon, at your time of life, chirpin' as if you was a cricket — and goin' round, as if you was nothin' bet- ter'n a bird, siugin' and hoppin', instead of beiu' a deacon, with an immortal soul in him ! Sometimes I am afeerd you are in the gall of bitterness yet. You ought to examine your evidences, Deacon Marble." — Norwood : Mrs. Polly Marble. This world would be a great groaning machine if God had not sent humor to make its wheels run smooth, and sparkling wit by which to light a torch that should guide a thousand weary feet in right ways. — Sermon : Keeping the Faith. I REJOICE in the provision that is made for more leisure, more vacation, more laughter, and less crying. These rub out the wrinkles. They widen the brain. They make the heart pulsate with better blood. Relaxa- tion is a good thing. — Sermon : Brain-Life in America. Don't be harsh in judgment. I am of the opinion of Baxter, who said that the grace of God could live with persons that he could not. — Sermon : Choosiiig a Wife. SOBRIETY. — D YSPEPSIA. — DANCING. 3 If a man was made sober, we ought not to reproach him for being so. If a man cannot laugh, he is no more to blame than his purse is, because that cannot laugh. — Sermon : They have their Reward. I NEVER saw a man who was large enough to report the whole truth in respect to any thing which he looked at. It has not been considered safe, I think, in heaven, where the manufactory of men is, to put every thing in every body. The result is, that one man carries so much, and another so much. Why, it takes about twenty men to make one sound man. — Sermon : Christian Sympathy. If you want to get the dyspepsia, follow down every mouthful, to know what it is doing. You wiU very speedily find out. — Sermon : Man-Building. The man that has lived for himself has the privilege of being his own mourner. — Sermon : Generosity and Liberality. And do not even the deacons now look more blandly upon dancing? When I was a boy, if I had done such a thing, my father would have fiddled with a different bow. — Sermon: Brain-Life in America. 4 BE EC HER AS A HUMORIST. God did not call you to be canary-birds in a little cage, and to hop up and down on three sticks, within a space no larger than the size of the cage. God calls you to be eagles, and to fly from sun to sun, over continents. — Sermon : The Perfect Manhood. There have been men who thought to make them- selves more devout by spending days in sepulchres. If worms are men's best priests, then that is the best place for a man to go to church. — Sermon : Thoughts of Death. If you send a villain to Albany or Washington to represent you, he does represent you ! — Sermon : Abhor- rence of Evil. Q. How long would you advise a young man to preach ? Mr. Beecher, As long as he can make his people take his sermon. That is very much like asking how long a coat you should have made for people, in general. Yale Lectures on Preaching. " Working for men who are not among the ' elect,' is like sewing without any thi-ead in your needle, — a good deal of work, and nothing to show for it." — Norwood: Agate Bissell. COMMENTARIES. — HUMOR IN THE PULPIT. 5 A Christian is the best commentary on the New Testament. But there are not enough such commenta- ries to send out. The edition is small. — Sermon : The Vital Principle. If a child would play nmmblety-peg, I would not advise him to go into the graveyard, and play on his father's and mother's graves. There are proprieties and adaptions : and if a man is called merely to please, if he is to be a mere pleasure-monger, even of ideas, let him take the lecture-room or the theater; let him go where pleasure is the normal end. — Sermon : The Right and the Wrong Way of Giving Pleasure. In preaching, never turn aside from a laugh any more than you would from a cry. ... If mirth comes up nat- urally, do not stifle it ; strike that chord, and particularly if you want to make an audience weep. If I make them laugh, I do not thank anybody for the next move : I will make them cry. Did you ever see a woman carrying a pan of milk quite full, and it slops over on one side that it did not immediately slop over on the other also? — Yole Lectures on Preaching. " A MAN that won't fight when his flag's fired on, ain't worth a dead nit." — Norwood : Hiram Beers. 6 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. Next, Hiram's prying eyes saw Mr. Turfraould, the sexton and undertaker, who seemed to be in a pensive meditation upon all the dead that he had ever buried. He looked upon men in a mild and pitying manner, as if he forgave them for being in good health. You could not help feeling that he gazed upon you with a profes- sional eye and saw just how you would look in the con- dition which was to him the most interesting period of a man's earthly state. He walked with a soft tread, as if he was always at a funeral; and, when be shook your hand, his left hand half followed his right, as if he were about beginning to lay you out. — Norwood. I REMEMBER when I was first asked to lead in prayer. If all the air between heaven and me had been put under the piston of a condenser, and crowded right down on my head, I should not have felt more as though I was suffo- cating! I gasped literally, and said, "No, sir." I felt crushed out of life. I was perfectly paralyzed. — Lecture- room Talks. What would you think of a man who should attempt to study botany by eating rotten chestnuts ? What if a man should eat decayed apples, and then pass judgment on fruity But men go thi-ough the Old Testament, and pick out the scandalous scenes, and say, "Here's a sample of your Bible." — Sermon: Conceptions of God. SPEAKING. — FALSE HUMILITY. — HYPOCRISY. 7 Some are gifted in oratory: while others are like pumps without a nozzle ; the well is deep, and there is plenty of water, but there is no way to get it out. It is a mere question of variety in gifts. — Sermon: Cou' science. You shall see the men who through the day walk with their face radiant, their eye full of life, their gestures quick ; who address themselves in a versatile way to their business; who are successful in their affairs; who are lively and genial in their social intercourse, so that every- body likes them; and who, when they go to their reli- gious meetings in the evenings, are dull of eye, stupid of tongue, and proper of body, every thing having gone to sleep in them, because religion is such an " awful " thing. And that is what they call an offering to God ! — Sermon : Religious Fervor. It is no compliment to divine grace for a man who has been forty years in the church to get up, and say, " I feel as though I was a vile and filthy rag." He is a vile and filthy rag to say that. — Sermon : The Peace of God. When a man is alive, how little do you suspect that he is what he is when you see him in the Sunday-school library ! — Sermon : Unprofitable Servants. 8 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. Many people are concerned because their children are sweet, loving, and compliant, so that they cannot get an awful religious experience out of them. It is as if the bass-viol should mourn because it cannot do what the flute does. — Sermon : As a Little Child. In some houses, family discipline, domestic life, and the whole end of living, seem to be to avoid dirt, and secure neatness. Is there any thing so tormenting as ecstatic neatness? Oh for a morsel of dirt, as a luxury I How good dust looks! A ploughed field with endless dirt, — all hail! The great sentence itself, which con- signs man finally to dust again, becomes a consolation. — Eyes and Ears. Two good men are neighbors, but they hardly speak to each other. They live in adjoining houses, and meet each other every day ; but they never recognize each other, and will hardly allow their children to play to- gether through the fence. This is because one man believes that he has been fore-ordained from all thne for glory, and the other — don't. — Sermon : Conscience. When did a child ever look ugly to its mother? And larks, doubtless, think their featherless, discolored, yel- low-mantled squabs more beautiful than full-grown hum- ming-birds. — Eyes and Ears. WUJPPING. — NA MES. — REPDTA TlON. 9 And when my father used to say, " Henry, I do not want to do it," I used to say to myself, "What under heaven do you do it for, then ! " I did not want to be whipped ; and if he did not want to whip me, it seemed to me a very unnecessary ceremony. But when I became a father, I felt that nothing in the world was more true. How one feeling interprets another ! When I had children to bring up, they so far inherited my nature, that they deserved to be whipped often; and they got their deserts. — Sermon : The Sympathy of Christ. " Folks use their children as if they were garret-pegs, to hang old clothes on — first a jacket, then a coat, and then another jacket. You have to take them all down to find either one. Our children go trudging all their lives with their load of names, as if they were Jews returning with an assortment of old clothes. People use their children as registers to preserve the names of aunts and uncles, parents and grandparents, and so inscribe them with the names of the dead, as if tombstones were not enough." — Norwood : Uncle Eb. If it is a little harder to build up character than repu- tation, it is only so in the beginning. For mere repu- tation, like a poorly built house, will cost as much for patciiing and i-epairs, as would have made it thorough at first. — Eyes and Ears. 10 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. What a pity it is that family discipline has to stop short at the point where it does I Many men would be helped by a good, sound, physical argument. Rubifica- tion would do them good. — Sermon : Counting the Cost. Abiong the ways which men employ to sustain their respectability, none is more common than an exhibition of their social connections. One whose cousin is a gov- ernor, whose uncle is a general, whose brother has been to Congress, cannot but stand well in society. Repu- tation is of the nature of a vine, and our reputable rela- tives are so much brush or trellis on which we rim up. — Eyes and Ears. Whatever you may think of the development theory behind, let me tell you that the development theory he- fore is worthy of a life's attention. — Evolution and Religion. God uses suffering as a whetstone, to make men sharp with. After you have made your knife sharp, your whetstone has served the purpose for which it was in- tended. But the ascetics seemed to think that, if the whetstone was good at all, it was good all the time; and so they kept whetting till they ground off not only the edge but the body of the blade. — Sermon : Bearing, but not Overborne. MARRIAGE. — DARWINISM. 11 In this great -whirligig of a world, there is nothing stranger than the mating and mismating of men and •women. There is no question that is more insoluble, and more often asked, than this : " What on earth ever tempted that woman to marry that man?" You cannot answer it, I cannot, and she cannot. There is but one other question like it ; and that is, " What on earth ever tempted that man to marry such a woman ? " He can- not tell, and she cannot, and nobody can. So it is, and 80 it will be, all the time, here, and there, and everywhere on earth. — Sermon : The Hidden Life. It has been supposed that we sprang from monkeys, and there has been an inquisition to see if there has not been a caudal appendage rubbed off. Nations have been explored to find a man who had a tail as a monkey has, or some traces of one. You are looking in the wrong place. Look inside, and you will find resem- blances to the monkey, the lion, the bear, and the hog, all of them. Human nature is full of the animal. — Sek- MON : War. I AM perfectly willing that it should be true, that, millions of years ago, my ancestors sprang from mon- keys. I would as lief spring from a monkey as from some men that I know of. — Sermon : Apostolic Christi- anity. 12 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. Far be it from me to say any thing in favor of Mr. Darwin ! But he has read his Bible, evidently, and has taken many ideas from Paul ; for I find that Paul's theoiy of the natural man, and Mr. Darwin's theory of the animal man, are very near together ; and that the ■whole line of apostolic thought, in regard to the inner man and the outer man, has a strange resemblance to the thought which Mr. Darwin is feeling after. — Lectures on Preaching. We are obliged to say that it was a treacherous chair. The rockers had been curved to such lines, that, if you ventured beyond a very gentle motion, the chair would give a backward lurch, as if going over; and there are few things more unsatisfactoi-y to a sober-minded person, careful of appearances, than to be carried over backwards in the midst of a quiet conversation. It is true that the chair never did go over. The shape of the rocker was such that, when the victim had spread his arms and flirted his legs into the air, in an involuntary effort at equilibrium, the chair stopped and set itself firmly, as if it had been blocked, returning again to its normal state only upon a violent effort of its occupant. The neighbors were aware of this propensity, and avoided the chair. Strangers usually had an experience with it ; (lie good doctor, or his wife, for the hundredth time, re- assuring them, " Don't be alarmed. It won't go over. I never knew anybody to fall."' — Norwood: Dr. Buell's Library. BORES. — CREDITS. — ADAM. — REPENTANCE. 13 Would it be manslaughter to kill a fool? Ought not the law to give a man some discretionary power over the life of these mosquitoes and gnats, that have, by some strange freak of nature, grown into the shape of men, without losing the propensities of insects ? — Eyes and Ears. We usually stretch the skirts of one good quality to cover the blank made by the absence of a dozen others. — Sermon : Unprofitable Servants. The human race was not created at the top in one man to fall to the bottom. Man began at the bottom, and, if there was any fall, it had to be upward. — Ser- mon : Adam and Christ. I have seen persons who have so exhausted themselves by religious emotions, that they had no strength left for religious duties. — Sermon : Conduct, the Index of Feeling. A BUNCH of needles put together is as blunt as a board ; but if you take each one out, and use it by itself, it is sharp, and pierces. If men are called to repentance in a bunch, they will be very apt to repent in a bunch, and their repentance will be very superficial. — Lectures on Preaching. 14 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. People think that he is the Christian who lies back in his chair, and has glorious visions and experiences. " Oh ! such a good time, such a joyful time, as I have had ! " a man says. Well, let me see what he does a day or two afterward, and I can tell better whether it is a genuine Christian experience or not. — Sermon : Con- duct, the Index of Feelimj. A MAN IS not to be known by how much money he has, but by what that money is worth to him. You must put your hand into a man's heart to find out how much he is worth, not into his pocket. — Eyes and Ears. Men say that a priest should wear white; and then that he should wear black; and then that he should wear symbols of the cross ; and that he should face the east in certain things ; and that he should turn his back to the congregation in other things. A man has a per- fect right to turn his back to his congregation if he chooses. I think it is better, in the case of many a man, that he should turn his back entirely. — Sermon : The Nature of Liberty. A COMPLIMENT is praise crystallized. It bears about the relation to praise that proverbs do to formal phi- losophy, or that form does to poetry. — Eyes and Ears. INS P IRA TION. — CONSCIENCE. — POLITICS. 1 5 I THINK there is a great deal more fighting for the Bible than there is of using it. There are a great many more persons anxious about the inspiration of the Bible, than there are about the spirit that is in it. — Sermon : The Mercifulness of the Bible. An intelligent conscience is one of the greatest of luxuries. It can hardly be called a necessity, or how would the world have got along as well as it has to this day ? — Sermon : Conscience. Have you a little chair of infallibility, upon which you can seat yourself at any time, and decide upon what is right or wrong, without possibility of error? — Ser- mon : Conscience. The great bulk of the people do not attend to publio affairs as heavenly helps. The politicians do. — Sermon : Brain- Life in America. Although all men should start with the democracy, all men have a right to stop with the aristocracy. Let all plant their feet on the same level, and then let them shoot as high as they please. Blessed is the man that knows how to overtop his neighbors by a fair development of skill and strength. — Fruits, Flowers, and Farming. 16 BEECH ER AS A HUMORIST. Public men are bees working in a glass hive; and curious spectators enjoy themselves in watching every secret movement, as if it were a study in natural history. — Eyes and Ears. A MAN undertakes to jump across a chasm that is ten feet wide, and jumps eight feet ; and a kind sympathizer says, "What is going to be done with the eight feet that he did jump? " Well, what is going to be done with it? It is one of those things which must be accomplished in whole, or it is not accomplished at all. — Seemon: The True Value of Morality. He is considered a blunderer nowadays who tells a lie. The artist will tell the truth so that it shall tell the lie. — Sermon: Trustworthiness. The idea that we sin because there is the remotest bit of yeast of that old man in us, may be just as well expunged. We do not need to borrow any thing of Adam. — Sermon : Adam and Christ. There is a temperate zone in the mind, between luxurious indolence and exacting work ; and it is to this region, just between laziness and labor, that summer reading belongs. — Eyes and Ears. HAYING. — OLD MATDS. — LIQUOR. 17 It is brave work to see men pitching and loading hay. We lie down under the apple-trees, and exhort them all to diligence. We are surprised at any pauses to wipe the perspiration from their brows. We are very cool. We think haying a beautiful sport. We admire to see it going on from our window 1 We resist all overtui'es of the scythe and the fork, for we think one engaged in the midst of it less favorably situated to make calm and accurate observations. — Eyes and Ears. " I'd as lief tend flowers with a crowbar as to have one of them old maids about, with little babies. I wonder she don't take the little creetur in her work-bag, and walk off to prayer-meetin' with it ! You need to watch her, mother, or she'll bile down a catechism instead of mint or catnip, when the child has wind." — Norwood: Tommy Taft. The best fire in winter is made up of exercise, and the poorest of whiskey. He that keeps warm on liquor is like a man who pulls his house to pieces to feed the firei^lace. — Fruits, Flowers, and Farming. We have in our midst that exceedingly high mountain to which Satan took Christ, and showed him the smiling world beneath. It is the daily newspaper. — After-dinner Speech, Baptist Union. 18 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. " I TELL you," said Hiram, turning slightly toward the doctor, " these horses are jest as near human as is good for 'em. A good horse has sense jest as much as a man has ; and he's proud, too, and he loves to be praised, and he knows when you treat him with respect. A good horse has the best pints of a man without his failin's." " What do you think becomes of horses, Hiram, when they die ? " said Rose. " Wal, Miss Rose, it's my opinion that there's use for horses hereafter, and that you'll find there's a horse- heaven. There's Scripture for that too." " Ah 1 " said Rose, a little surprised at these confident assertions. " What Scripture do you mean ? " "Why, in the Book of Revelation ! Don't it give an account of a white horse, and a red horse, and black horses, and gray horses? I've allers s'posed that when it said Death rode on a pale horse, it must have been gray, 'cause it had mentioned white once already. In the ninth chapter, too, it says there was an army of two hun- di'ed thousand horsemen. Now, I should like to know where they got so many horses in heaven, if none of 'em that die off here go there ? It's my opinion that a good horse's a darned sight likelier to go to heaven than a bad man ! " — Norwood. It is hard for a strong-willed man to bow down to a weak-willed man. It is hard for an elephant to say his prayers to an ant. — Sermon : The Reward of Loving. THE CHURCH. — THE LORD'S DAY. 19 The old idea of salvation was that, men were crackers all cut of a certain size, baked to a certain dryness, packed in church- boxes, and kept there. And when men were taken into church, they were like so many packages taken by an express company, and safely delivered at the other end of the i-oute. — Sermon : Other Men's Consciences. " Whose nag is that one, Hiram, — the roan ? " " That's Deacon Marble's." "Why, he seems to sweat standing still." Hiram's eye twinkled. "You needn't say nothin'. Doctor; but I thought it a pity so many horses shouldn't be doin' any thing! Of course, they don't know any thing about Sunday, — it ain't like workin' a creatur' that reads the Bible, — so I jest slipped over to Skiddy's widder — she ain't been out doors this two months, and I knew she ought to have the air — and I gave her about a mile! She was afraid 'twould be breakin' Sunday. ' Not a bit,' says I. ' Didn't the Lord go out Sundays, and set folks off with their beds on their backs ? and didn't he pull oxen and sheep out of ditches, and do all that sort of thing?' If she'd knew that I took the Deacon's team, she'd been worse afraid. But I knew the Deacon would like it; and if Polly didn't, so much the better. I like to spite those folks that's too particular ! — There, Doctor, there's the last hymn." — Nokwood : A New-England Sunday. 20 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. I HAVE never seen anybody that didn't make mistakes, except babies, and they always died early. — Sekmon : Mutual Judgments. The deacon has a weakness for preaching ; and as he cannot quite succeed, he puts a white cravat on, sleeks down his hair, and looks as if he would burst out into a sermon if you only touched him. We are prone to undervalue the things which we can do easily, and there- fore well, and to pride ourselves upon trifles, although we do them poorly, because men are surprised that we can do them at all. — Eyes and Ears. When I was a boy, nothing suited me so well as to have my father whip me when my clothes were on. Then I could bear it with the most equanimity. It was when he took me at advantage, in the morning, before I was dressed, that I did not like whipping. — Sekmon : The Conjlicts of Life. One or two extraordinary water-color pictures, exe- cuted by his wife, as the last consummate efforts of her expiring school-days, had been framed in black, .and now hung in the sitting-room. It always pleased Dr. Buell to have visitors notice them ; and his invariable comment was, " My wife's paintings ! — when she was younger and less occupied. I am told that they are remarkable." They certainly were, — Norwood : Dr. BueU's Library. LOVERS. — RELIGION. — POVERTY. 21 We met a solitary man in the rain, between twelve and one at night. It seemed strange to see any thing human moving in the darkness and solitude of midnight. AVe hailed him, and inquired the way. Then we specu- lated what errand took him out. Not a thief, surely. " Perhaps he has been for a doctor," said the driver. " Or to watch with some sick neighbor," said I. "Or, maybe, a-courting," said the driver. "But," said I, "he was a middle-aged man, and not a young, spruce lover." — "No matter," says the driver: "it's about one thing with old or young when they go a-courting." — Star Papers : A Moist Letter. It may be that a man knows the catechism by heart (I have known men to survive it), and stand very high. — Sermon : The Golden Net. When Peter heard the cock crow, it was not the tail- feathers that crew. The crowing came from the inside of the cock. Religion is something more than the out- ward observances of the church. — Sermon: The Battle of Benecolence. We all say, " Blessed are the poor ; " and yet, if tliere be one blessing which we would prefer not to have more than another, it is that of poverty. — Sermon : Bearing One Another's Burdens. I'i BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. When I ridicule people, I want to do it in a good- natured way. That takes off the sting. But I cannot help laughing at Perfectionists. The idea of a perfect man or a perfect woman in this world is one of the sweetest jests that I ever roll under my tongue ! — Ser- mon: Contentment in All Tilings. What is the magnificent dome of St. Peter's but the highest development of that idea which you shall see expressed or hinted in every well-conditioned pumpkin. Thus, a few acanthus-leaves, touched by human genius, gave us the Corinthian capital. The arches of the forest, we are sometimes told, are the primitive types of Gothic architecture. Do not leaves, stems, roses, fleur-de-luces, sunflowers, clover-leaves, and scores of other things, furnish to architecture its richest decorations? But it was reserved to the pumpkin to crown the whole, by giving to architects the conception of a ribbed dome. Thus it is that modest merit often finds itself honored. — Eyes and Ears. There is very little hope of a fool ; and if a man who is conceited is worse off Lliaii that, he is badly off indeed. — Sekmon : Conceit. There is only one thing that J can think of that is not dangerous, and that is dying. — Sermon : The Inspiration of the Scripture. NAMING FLOWERS. — RELIGIOUS SENSE. 23 Just as soon as we have got politics settled, business reformed, and human nature elevated, I am determined to form a society for the reformation of botanical names- Botany has been the Noah's Ark of pedants. One might as well hang a dictionary around a child's neck by way of ornament, as to impose on flowers such outrageous and outlandish names. — Fruits, Flowers, and Farming. One of my boys conies in crying, and says, " Father, I ran against a lamp-post, and bruised my face." I say, "My son, do not run against lamp-posts." The next day he comes in with another bruise, and says, " I did not run against a lamp-post: I ran against a tree." — "Well," I say, " do not run against lamp-posts nor trees." The next day he comes in, having had another whack, and says, " I did not rue against a lamp-post nor a tree. I ran against an iron railing." He had obeyed me, and yet he was hurt. " "Well," you say, " the child who could not understand that, would be an idiot ; " — but you ought not to, because, in saying it, you sweep away half the theologians in creation. — Sekmon : 21ie Science of Rir/JU Living. There are many who measure what they are doing by what they can report. They go out with garrulity in the morning, and come back with statistics at night. — Sekmon : Patience. 24 BEECIIER AS A IJUMOEIST. " Why, what did be go to Boston for ? " " Well, that's a pretty question ! That's the only place to go to I Why, if a man wants any thing, he alius goes to Boston. Every thing goes there, just as natural as if that city was the moon, and every thing else was water, and had to go, like the tides. Don't you know all the rail- roads go to Boston ? and sailors say — you ask Tommy Taft — if you start anywhere clear down in Floridy, and keep up along the coast, you will fetch up in Boston. They have to keep things tied up around there. They fasten their trees down, and have their fences hitched, or they would all of 'em whirl into Boston. They have watchers set every night, or so many things would come to admire Boston that tlie city would be covered down like Herculaneum. Of course the doctor went to Boston. Every single one of the first chop folks was married oif the week afore he got there, but one : there was just one left. But she was the very best of the lot. The doctor saw her in Old South Church. She was a-singin', ' Come, ye disconsolate.' The minute she set her eyes on the doctor — ! " — NoiiWOOD : Hiram Beers. Badgered, snubbed, and scolded on the one hand; petted, flattered, and indulged on the other, — it is aston- ishing liow many children work their way up to an honest manhood in spite of parents and friends. Human nature has an element of great toughness in it. — Eyes and Ears. HOW TO WRITE. — .MONEY-VALUE. 25 I WANDERED out tliis momiiig under the trees (the good lady had gone to the village, and her daughter too ; and I was quite free, and was sliirking all work, and having a good time on the grass). That, you know, is a good way to write an article. It is bad to go out and look at things if you wish to write about them. You must let them look at you. You must show yourself to nature ; walk about confidently and lovingly; gaze at just those things that have magnetism in them, or sympathy, or influence, or whatever you choose to call it. Then, after an hour or two, if you wish to write, go to your desk, and whatever has had a real hold upon you will then come vividly up like pictures, — just as it does to me now ; and I should give you a sparkling, glorious article now, were it not that at this very nick of time I am interrupted by the word, that, if I send in time for this week, I must send this minute. Oh, what you have lost ! It was very fine — very — the thing 1 was about to do ! — Eyes and Ears. Down to the grave comes the millionnaire. " IIow much are you worth '? " says Death. " Men call me worth thii'ty millions." It is not enough to pay his ferriage ! But he goes through ; and when he has got thi-ough, his wealth having been taken from him, he is no bigger than a mosquito. There is hardly enough of him for a nucleus to stai-t on in the next life. — Sermon : Treasure that cannot he Stolen. 26 BE EC HER AS A HUMORIST. " What's an old sailor good for but to know all the odds and ends, and crinkum-crankums for young folks ? The only jolly folks in this world are young folks that ain't good for nothin' yet, and old folks that's past doiu' much. All the rest of the world are livin' in a pucker and a fume all the time." — Norwood : Tommy Taft. I HAVE heard men, in family prayer, confess their wickedness, and pray that God would forgive them the sins that they got from Adam ; but I do not know that I ever heard a father in family prayer confess that he had a bad temper. I never heard a mother confess in family prayer that she was irritable and snappish. I never heard persons bewail those sins which are the engineers and artificers of the moral condition of the family. The angels would not know what to do with a prayer that began, "Lord, thou knowest that I am a scold." — Sermon : Peaceahleness, The distinction between Abolitionists and Anti- slavery men is not one of doctrine, but of method. Mr. Garrison and Mr. Phillips said, "The North must save itself by disunion from complicity with slavery ; " but the great body of anti-slavery men said, " We cannot consent to that." I was one among the latter: I would not burn a barn in order to get rid of the rats. — Speech in Muiichesler. SPEECHES IN ENGLAND. 27 It was like driving a team of runaway horses and making love to a lady at the same time. — Description of Speech in Liverpool^ 1863. You never can do any thing with an excited man or an excited crowd, taking them on the rising tide ; but if you can only get them to bawl for two hours, until they are tired, then there is some chance for you. — Sermon: Paul and Demetrius. First, the wonderful demand for cotton throughout the world, precisely when, from the invention of the cotton-gin, it became easy to turn it to service. Slaves that before had been worth from $300 to -1400, began to be worth fOOO : that knocked away one-third of adherence to the moral law. Then they became worth $700, and half the law went; then |800 or $900, and there was no such thing as moral law. And finally they were worth $1,000 or $1,200, and slavery became one of the Beatitudes. — Speech in Manchester. INIany of you object to our war because it is tear. Now, I must say, that for any Englishman to be opposed, on principle, to war, is a greater mark of sincerity and frankness than any thing I know of. You have two wars on hand now, and I hardly know the time when you have not had one. — Speech in London. 28 BEECHER AS A HUMORfST. The great art of managing a congregation lies in this: be good-natured yourself, and keep them good- natured, and then they will not need any managing. — Lectures on Preaching. A REAL good-natured man is the most troublesome morsel that the malign passions ever attempt to feed upon. He is the natural superior of irritable persons. He that can govern himself can control others. An irritable man, whom any one can excite, is like a horse kept at livery, ridden by every one, and spurred by each rider. Nobody is so little his own master as he who can be stirred and provoked at another's will. — Eyes and Ears. In my own land, I have been the object of misrepresen- tation and abuse so long that when I did not receive it I felt there was something lacking in the atmosphere. — Speech in Glasgow. Apple-pie should be eaten while it is yet florescent, white or creamy yellow, with the merest drip of candied juice along the edges (as if the flavor were so good to it- self that its own lips watered !), of a mild and modest warmth; the sugar suggesting jelly, yet not jellied; the morsels of apple neither dissolved, nor yet in original sub- stance, but hanging, as it were, in a trance between the spirit and the flesh of applehood. — Eyes and Ears. EARL Y RISING. — TIIIE VER Y. 29 Getting up early is venerable. Since there has been a literature or a history, the habit of early rising has been recommended for health, for pleasure, and for business. The ancients are held up to us for examples. But they lived so far to the east, and so near the siui, that it was much easier for them than for us. People in Europe always get up several hours before w^e do; people in Asia several hours before Europeans do; and we suppose, as men go toward the sun, it gets easier and easier, until, somewhere in the Orient, probably they step out of bed involuntarily, or, like a flower blossoming, they find their bedclothes gently opening and turning back, by the mere attraction of light. — Eyes and Ears. They are men who would not rob a bank ; they would not join a company of burglars, or any thing like that ; but they are men, who, if they saw on somebody's mantel-piece a snuff-box which was made out of the mulberry-tree that Shakspeare planted in his garden, might take it up, and might be tempted to forget where they put it w'hen they laid it down ; and therefore it might be found in their cabinet, and not in the other man's. — Sermon : The Nature and Sources of Temptation. A MAN who runs away from a thief in his house is a Bneak, and does not deserve a house. — Sekmon : Loving and Hating. 30 BEECH ER AS, A HUMORIST. To-day T was at work among my grape-vines, when my attention was attracted by two robins that were making a great racket. I was sure by their actions that they had young ones which they thought to be in danger. And I said, "Why, you old fools! I won't hurt you nor your little birds." Just then I heard a noise that I recog- nized; and I said, " The cat is here." And sure enough, looking down, I saw the cat curled up under the trellis. It was the sight of him that had set the birds all agog, " What is he doing here ? " I asked. He had no business there, — and all the more because I had just written an article saying that my cats had been so brought up that I did not believe any of them hunted birds ! In my indig- nation, I seized him by the neck, and walked off with him to the other side of the cherry-orchard, and gave him an opportunity to find out how it would seem if he were fly- ing. And I sent one or two stones after him by way of application. — Lecture-room Talks. Did you ever see a boyhood that was not a mystery of Providence ? Are not boys always in men's way ? Evi- dently, boys have no part, no place, and no function, in society. If they could be shot at birth, like an arrow, straight up to manhood, that would be another matter; but they are not. And did you ever know a neighborhood that had not the worst boys in the world ? Did you ever know a neighbor whose boys were not the worst that ever lived? — Sermon : Bearing One Another's Bwdens. SWEARING. 31 " The Doctor's not at home, you say ? That's my luck ! But what a blessin' to this town to have such a minister in't ! Sez I to Hiram, t'other day, sez I, ' Hiram, you ought to be a better man than you be, seein' you have sech extraordinary preachin' and example.' But Hiram, you know, marm, though nowise vicious, is not given to sper- itual things. More's the pity ! But what a privilege it must be to you, marm, to be his wife ! Remarkable that sech a blessin' should be given to just one woman ! Your husband don't never swear, marm, does he ? " The start of unaffected amazement with which Mrs. Buell echoed the word " swear ! " seemed infinitely grati- fying to Tommy, who raised and lowered his shaggy eye- brows several times, saying with each movement, — " Of course not — of course not. 1 knew he didn't. If anybody had told me that Dr. Buell swore, 1 wouldn't a b'lieved it on oath. Impossible ! impossible ! Jest think of it — the Doctor swearin'. Oh, it's beautiful to see a man that don't swear and don't want to ! But really, marm — when you see how wicked folks is — what ugly things they will do — don't you think it's kind o' natural to swear ? Not profane swearin', of course, but pious swearin'." . . . " J\Iy dear," said INIrs. Buell to her husband, " don't you think Tommy Taft is near to the kingdom .'' He seems to me to have much that's good in him. 1 can't but hope there's a work going on slowly in him." " Yes — very slowly." — Norioood. 32 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. Newton sat in an orchard ; and an apple, plumping down on his head, started a train of thouglit which opened the heavens to us. Had it been in California, the size of the apples there would have saved hiin the trouble of much thinking thereaftei', perhaps, opening the heavens to him, and not to us. — Fruits, Flowers, and Farming. There are only two or three things required for a good stone wall. It must be made so that chipmonks can run in and out easily ; it must have woodbine enough, in spots ; it must have a deal of mosses growing on it ; and it must be broad enough on the top for one to walk on. I know of nothing else which a good wall requires. — Eyes and Ears. The Pope of Rome is a good man. He has acted as a good Christian under the most enormous difficulties. Pius IX. and I will sing hymns in heaven together one of these days, and I expect to have some sport with him if humor don't die out in the mean time. — Sermon : Conscience. And as to those impertinent persons, those little speci- mens of men, who would kick their Bible overboard because they have found out, by reading in the corner of some newspaper, that the Scriptures are not true — I need not waste words upon such bubbles, that break if you touch them. — Sermon : The Two Revelations. CONFiCIENCE. — HA Y-RIDING. — A PUZZLER. 33 Hospitality does not ask you to sit on a log because a log is necessary to the building of a house. I would as lief sit on the square end of a log all iny life as to live with men, who, though they have conscience, are harsh and unlovely and unfruitful because there is nothing in them to cover up that conscience. — Seumon : Tlie Bailie of Benevolence. A CHILD that has not ridden up from the meadow to the barn on a load of hay has yet to learn one of the lux- uries of exultant childhood. "What care they for jolts, when the whole load is a vast and multiplex spring ? The more the wagon jounces, the better they like it! Then come the bars, leadmg into the lane with maple- trees on each side. The limbs reach down, and the green leaves kiss the children over and over again. So would I, if I were a green leaf, and not consider myself so gx'een after all ! — Fruits, Flowers, and Farming. There was no excess and no absurdity which he would not zealously defend, if some sober and literal man sought logically to corner him. He disputed axioms, refused to admit first principles, laughed at premises, and ran down conclusions, dogmatized and madly asserted, with the merriest and absurdest indifference to all con- sistency ; for which there is no parallel, unless it be that of a very lively horse, in a very large pasture, with a very gouty man trying to catch him. — Norwood. 34 BE EC II ER AS A HUMORIST. When Christianity is developed through an inordinate ecclesiasticisni, it makes me think of some children that you have seen dressed — very small babies, rolled up and rolled wp and rolled up in such a multitude of caps and ribbons and blankets that it took half an hour to get down to the spot where you heard some faint crying ! Christianity has been swathed, and bandaged, and wound up, and covered up, for the sake, it is said, of its symbols, and sealed with stamps and signs and signets, till it was no bigger than a cricket; while the Church was bigger than a whole castle. Christianity has been smothered in its robes. — Sermon : Christian Manhood in America. I WENT through all the colic and anguish of hyper- Calvinism while I was yet yoiuig. Happily, my consti- tution was strong. I regard the old hyper-Calvinistic system as the making of as strong men as ever lived on the face of this earth ; but 1 think it kills five hundred where it makes one. — Address : London Congregational Board. ]\Iy mother dedicated me to the work of the foreign missionary; she laid her hands upon me, wept over me, and set me apart to preach the gospel among tlie heathen. And I have been doing it all my life long ; for it so happens, one does not need to go far from his own country to find his audience before him. — Addijess: London Congregational Board. ORIGINAL SIN. — BAPTISM. — COMMON SENSE. 35 What about original sin? There has been so much actual transgression, that I have not had time to go back oil to that. — Address : London Congregational Board. Under my platform in Brooklj'n I have a baptistery; and if anybody's son or daughter, brought up in Baptist ideas, wants to be immersed, you won't catch me reason- ing with them : I baptize them. So it is that I immerse, I sprinkle, and I have in some instances poured ; and I never saw there was any difference in the Christianity that was made. — Address : London Congregational Board. After all, is it not wonderful that men do so well as they do ? Consider how many men you daily meet, most of them with pleasure, and few of them with real annoy- ance. Common sense, at least in its lower forms, is more common than we are apt to think. — Eyes and Ears. The average and general influence of a man's teaching will be more mighty than any single misconception, or misapprehension through misconception. A man might run around, like a kitten after its tail, all his life, if he were going around explaining all his expressions, and all the things he had written. Let them go. They will correct themselves. — Address : New-York and Brooklyn Association. 36 BEECUER AS A HUMORIST. How many persons say, " That cliild is coming to the gallows : it is like a witch ! " or, " That child is a little thief ! " Nineteen out of every twenty women are mothers of a little thief, or a little liar, or a little pig, or a little fox, or a little wolf, or a little serpent, — al- though we rock our cradles, and call our babes angels. — Sermon : The Fruits of Palience. A MINISTER who is Very beautiful, and superlatively graceful, sets people to admiring him. They make a kind of monkey-god of him, and it stands in the way of his usefulness. From this temptation most of us have been mercifully delivered. — Lectures on Preaching. If one will take the trouble to watch his own mind, or — which he will find to be a great deal more natural — to watch the conduct of his neighbors, he will observe how readily men listening to discourse believe more firmly what they believed before. If I were to urge the benefits of an easy and good-natured contentment in life, the anxious and the careful would shake their heads, and fear that these qualities would lead to carelessness and mischief. Whereas, all the heedless and jovial, who live for one day at a time, and never provide for to-morrow, would jump at the doctrine, and rejoice in its wisdom. — Eyes and Ears. FAMILY SECRETS. — A BOBOLINK. 37 Another fair heart has suffered itself to fall into shocking doubts : — " Dear Sir, — It is with great pleasure that I read your arti- cles; and I have esjDecially relished your ' Summer Dinner,' which was got up in such good style. But — and this is wliat is very important — did you have to aslc your wife the differ- ent names of the vegetables, and how to cook themV Or do you believe in Men's Rights, and so know how to do your own cooking, seasoning, and eating? " The family should be sacred. This attempt to pry into its secrets must not succeed. This question answered, the next one would be, whether we wrote our own articles for " The Ledger," or whether some one dictated them to us? And then would comi questions as to who wi'ote the sermons? Then, when once the stream had broken over the bounds of proper privacy, it would rush through kitchen aud pantry, closet and cupboard, cellar and attic, until the slime of curiosity w'ould lie thick on all the sacred places of the household. " Ask our wife," forsooth ! We asked her once for all, some years ago; and the answer lasts, full aud strong, until this day. — Eyes and Ears. There, on the very topmost twig, that rises and falls with willowy motion, sits that ridiculous but sweet- singing bobolink, singing, as a Roman-candle fizzes, showers of sparkling notes. — Eyes and Ears. 38 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. Beauty is generally unfavorable to good dispositions. (I am talking to the ladies now.) There seems to be some dissent, but this is the orthodox view. It seems as if the evil incident to human nature had struck in, with handsome people, leaving the surface fair; while the homely are so, because the virtue within has purged and expelled the evil, and driven it to the skin. — Fruits, Flowers, and Fanning. There are some men who never wake up enough to swear a good oath. The man who sees the point of a joke the day after it is uttered, — because Jie never is known to act hastily, is he to take credit for that? — Sermon : Conscience. At a friend's houce, lately, I saw what was apparently a little book lying on the table; and I took it up. On the outside was, *' The Portrait of an Angel." On opening it, I found that it was a mirror. And, O ! what an angel I saw in it ! — Sermon : 71ie ReVujion of Hope. If one limb is shorter than the other, we can splice out the shoe; but if a man is born without common sense, I do not know of any crutch or splice that will supply the lack. He must wiggle on the best ^yay he can. — Sermon : The Prujil of Godliness. MOSQUITOES. — DISCIPLINE. — MORALITY. 39 Gnats, fleas, bed-bugs, chiggers, and othex' things that shall be nameless, make a business of supplying their hunger, without refinement, without the accompaniments of conversation, or any refinements whatsoever. It is mere appetite. But a mosquito will not gorge himself for the sake of eating. He first offers you a song. — Eyes and Ears. I REMEMBER Very well, when I used to come in from my sports, soiled and sniouched (for I did not spare myself), and was to be brought into decent society, and it was necessary for the sisterly hand to rub the dirt from my face, I never liked it. And I know that when my hair, that went with the winds, and played with every one of them, had to be smoothed out, I never liked the passage of the comb through it — although they were seeking beauty. (I hope they found it!) When I had committed any offence, and it became necessary for me to see that I had violated the law of kindness and to feel those mysterious tinglings, which were eye-openers, these things were not pleasant to me. — Sermon: GoiVs Disinterestedness. A MORA!, man is like an empty bottle well corked, so that no defilement can get into it, so that it may be kept pure within. Pure ? And what is the use of a bottle that is pure, if it is empty and corked up? — Sermon- Using One's Life for Others. 40 BEECEER AS A HUMORIST. Even to this hour, the first acquaintance with oysters is with much hesitation and squeamish apprehension. Who, then, first gulped the dainty thing, and forever after called himself blessed ? — Eyes and Ears. Then, again, I like these dinners, because there is no wine in them. Yet I must confess, that a liberal use of wine makes after-dinner speaking much easier. JNlen will then laugh heartily at the oldest kind of a chestnut. Then, again, I like these dinners because they don't smoke here. My wife can bear witness, that, after I have attended one of those grand dinners, my clothes smell of tobacco for two days. And I do not want to smell of smoke, either in this world or the world to come. — Baptist Uxion : After-dinner Speech. The grave is God's bankrupt court, which clears a man of his property and his debts at the same time. — Sermon : Treasure that cannot be Stolen. " What a pity," said Uncle Tommy, with a very sober air, "that babies weren't born like books! Then they wouldn't trouble anybody — could put 'em up on a shelf, have 'em always dry — take 'em down when you want to use 'em — never grow any bigger — no trouble to any- body. " — Norwood. SENSE. — AD VICE. — RELIGION. — MOTHS. 41 Godliness does not teach a crow to sing like a nightingale. If a man has gone into a business which he is not fit for, he cannot make up what he lacks by taking part in prayer-meeting, or distributing tracts, or any thing of that kind. A man must use his good sense in adapting himself to his business. — Sermon : The Profit of Godliness. Do you think oxen better, on the whole, for farm- work, than horses ? I seriously wish your advice as to which I had better have. For I have just bought a pair of oxen, and am, like most men, now ready to ask advice under circumstances which make it impossible for me to take it, unless it accords with a foregone fact. — Eyes and Ears. Men have very largely had presented to them the machinery of religion instead of religion ; as if a farmer should present to you ploughs, crowbars, harrows, carts, wagons, spades, and they should produce the impression on you that those were the only apples and pears that were on the farm. — Sermon : " My Yoke is Easy." It always seemed to me, that, however mischievous to us was a moth's appetite, it must be a very lean and mel- ancholy thing to him, to eat dry cloth, with nothing to drink, growing fat upon rubbish, and washing it down with darkness. — Eyes and Ears. 42 BEECnER AS A HUMORIST. Don't mope. Be a boy as long as you live. Laugh a good deal. Frolic every day. Keep up high spirits. A low tone of mind is unhealthy. There's food and medicine in nerve. Quantity and quality of nerve mark the distinctions between animals and between men, from the bottom of creation to the top. — Norwood. The old-fashioned way of preparing a sermon was where a man. sat down with his pipe, and smoked and "thought," as he called it, and after one or two or tliree hours, — his wife saying to everybody in the mean time, " Dear man, he is up-stairs studying. He has to study so hard ! " — in which he has been in a muggy, fumbling state of mind, he at last comes out with the product of it for the pulpit. It is like unleavened bread, doughy, dumpy, and heavy; hard to eat, and harder to digest. Thei'e has been nothing put in it to vitalize it. — Lectures on Preaching. The most melancholy singing I ever heard was that of a bullfinch in a cage, that had been taught little operatic airs, and whistled them over and over until I wanted to wring its neck. Any such training in human life as takes out spontaneity, elasticity, and originality ; as hides all those glorious impulses and spurts of necessary life ; all reduction of a man's life to a mathematical prob- lem, — is to be avoided. — Sekmon : Man-Building. GIVING. — FUN. — BIRDS. — L UXURY. 43 When the miser is called to face the contribution-box, and all the neighbors are looking at him, and he has to deny himself, he puts in his contribution, saying, inside, tearfully, " Good-by ! " it is a self-denial to him. — Sermon : Bearing, but not Ooerhorne. You cannot make a man laugh because he ought to laugh. You may analyze a jest, or a flash of wit, and present it to a man, saying, " Here are the elements of mirth ; and these being presented to you as I now present them, if you are a rational being you will accept the statement of them, and laugh." But nobody laughs so. People laugh first, and afterwards think why they laughed. The feeling of mirth is first excited, and afterwards the intellect analyzes that which produced the laughter. It converts into an idea that which was first an emotion or an experience. — Sermon : Heart Conviction. SnoOT and eat my birds ? It is but a step this side of cannibalism. The next step beyond, and one would han- ker after Jenny Lind or Miss Kellogg. — Fruits, Flowers, and Farming. Luxury men are afraid of. So am I, if it is pig's lux- ury, but not if it is angelic luxury. — Sermon : Moral Theory of Civii Liberty. 44 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. " A LONG bridge to walk over, Doctor ! " "Do peoi^le always miud the law, and keep upon a walk ? " " That depends. When the boys are on a spree, and have had a little suthin', I alias raises a trot about here : they thinks the bridge too long. But when a feller's along with his gal, he alius thinks the bridge too short ; and he's particular about keepin' the law. Only last week I was about here, and I heerd a sort of smack behind me ; and the horses thought I was chirrupin' for 'em to go on, and started off. But I cooled 'em down, and began to whistle, like, so that you couldn't hear any little sound. The fact is. Doctor, young folks will be young folks ; and I never was one of them as wanted to larf at 'em. Let 'em have their time. I think it rather beauti- ful like to see young folks take to each other. The Lord knows they'll have trouble enough afore they get through livin' with each other, and it would be a shame to spile the beginnin', when it's all sweet and pretty, like. "No," said Hiram, virtuously straightening up : "when Zeke Lash driv over one day, and interrupted some little cooin' and billin' that he had no business with, and I heard him tellin' of it in the stable — 'You're a darned fool,' sez I ; ' and if it had been any of my folks, I'd made you taste the horsewhip, every inch of it, from the tip of the lash to the butt end. I'd as soon throw stones at the birds whirlin' and kissin' in the air. When they are old, and we're used to 'em, I don't object to throw a SLEEP. — LAZY RELIGION. — VITALITY. 45 stone or two at a robin. But any feller that would do it when they fust come — he^s a mean cuss ! " — Norwood : Hiram Beers. Never gauge the duration of your sleep by the time any one else sleeps. Some men will tell you that John Wesley had only so much sleep, Hunter, the great physi- ologist, so much, and Napoleon so much. But when the Lord made you, as a general thing he did not make Napoleons. Every man carries within himself a Mount Sinai, a revealed law, written for himself separately. — Lectures on Preaching. Prayer is often an argument of laziness : " Lord, my temper gives me a vast deal of inconvenience, and it would be a great task for me to correct it ; and wilt thou be pleased to correct it for me, that I may get along easier ? ' If prayer was answered under such circum- stances, independent of action of natural laws, it would be paying a premium on indolence. — Lecture-room Talks : Answers to Prayer. In the Park I see people that are dead, though living; and in Greenwood I see people that are dead, and stay dead. —Sermon : A Safe Guide for Young Men. 46 B EEC HER AS A HUMORIST. There is a class of men that we often meet, who might be called not so much religious talkers as I'eligious chat- terers. I have myself suffered from their inflictions. Men they are, who, when they talk, go off like a watch- man's rattle, and with a sound as dry and sharp. — Lecture-room Talks : Conversing with the Impenitent. There are a great many people who seem to think that religion means not doing lorong. As if a knitting- machine that never knit any stockings would be con- sidered good because it never misknit ! What is a man good for who simply does not do some things ? — Sermon : Law and Liberty. Many persons say that they are going to heaven be- cause they " have a hope." What is a hope ? Suppose a snake should take its last year's skin, which it has cast off, and think it was bigger for that old, dry skin ! It would be very much like a Christian who takes what he calls his hope, that was never worth much, and that be- comes less and less valuable the older it grows, and rests upon that. — Sermon : As a Little Child. This world was made for poor men ; and therefore the greatest part of it was left out of doors, where everybody could enjoy it. — Eyes and Ears. GIFTS. — RESOL UTIONS. — PROVIDENCE. 47 You cannot have wit enough, you cannot have good- nature enough, you cannot have artistic talent enough, you cannot have imagination enough, provided you ap- preciate their vahie, and see them in the light of the uses to which they may be put, for the good of your fellow-meu. — Sermon : Keeping the Faith. Do not be a spy on yourself. A man who goes down the street thinking of himself all the time, with critical analysis, whether he is doing this, that, or any other thing, — turning himself over as if he were a goose on a spit before a fire, and basting himself with good reso- lutions, — is simply belittling himself. — Lectures on Preaching. When God wants to work a providence, he does not think it necessary that he should whisper and say, "Clouds, go down and rain on Beecher's farm." He says to i7ie, " Subsoil your land ; " and when I have done that, I shall have a cistern which will supply all the moisture that my crops need, without the aid of plumbers, thank God ! and without any pipes. — Sermon : Special Providence. If there is one thing more odious than another, it is decaying fat. But if there is money in it, how sweet is the perfume, — at least to the men that stand in the midst of it ! — Sermon : Self-Contrql Possible to AIL 48 BE EC HER AS A HUMORIST. You have got to drive prayer-meetings just as you do horses. You cannot keep flies from biting them, nor them from whisking their tails, in a summer's day. . . . The absurd saints that I have had, tlie ridiculous crea- tures that have come in, the interruptions that we have had ! Meetings brought to a blessed point, — like a cow that has given a good bucket of milk, only to put her foot in it, — to be entirely ruined ! — Lectures on Preaching. On one occasion a well-intentioned but feeble-minded, feeble-voiced woman arose in Plymouth prayer-meeting, and meandered on for a long time in mystical, meaning- less talk. When she finally sat down, ^Mr. Beecher (who bad sat motionless, with downcast eyes, all the while) looked up with the play of a humorous twinkle on his face, but said with a perfectly serious voice, " Neverthe- less, — I am in favor of women's speaking. Sing eight thirty-eight" (or whatever the number was). Why did not the apple-tree grow on the top of a hill? And why did not the slope of the hill run down into every man's cellar, so that every apple that dropped should roll into a bin in his cellar, without any eifort on his part ? Why was not every thing some thing, and some thing every thing? In short, why did God make every thing as he did ? — Sermon : The Conflicts of Life. DIVISION-WALLS. — APPLES. 49 Free trade between churches and ministers ! I am "free-trade" on that if I am not anywhere else. Was there ever any thing so foolish, so absurd, so squeamish, as all this talk about the sanctity of the church, and about a man's loyalty to his denomination ? You might as well talk about my loyalty to the fences round about my farm. Fences are very good things against cattle, but you need not make a life-and-death matter of them. " — Sermon : Concord, not Unison. When the day was done, and the candles were lighted, and the supper was out of the way, we all gathered about the great kitchen-fire ; and soon after, George or Henry had to go down for apples. Generally it was Henry. A boy's hat is a universal instrument. It is a bat to smack butterflies with, a bag to fetch berries in, a basket for stones to pelt frogs withal, a measure to bring up apples in. And a big-headed boy's old felt hat was not stingy in its quantities; and when its store ended, the errand could always be repeated. To eat six, eight, and twelve apples in an evening was no great feat for a growing young lad, whose stomach was no more in danger of dyspepsia than the neighborhood mill, through whose body passed thousands of bushels of corn, leaving it no fatter at the end of the year than at the beginning. Cloyed with apples ? To eat an apple is to want to eat another. — Fruits, Flowers, and Farming, 50 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. If a man can get rich by looking, I am on the royal road to wealth. And, indeed, it is true wealth that the eye gets, and the ear, and all the finer senses, — riches that cannot be hoarded or squandered; that ^11 may have in common ; that come without meanness, and abide without corrupting. — Eyes and Ears. I AM astonished at these Chinese myself! They have seen so many beautiful exhibitions of Christian character, that they must be very stupid not to admire it. It must be that they are bereft of natural reason, not to be fasci- nated with California piety, and not to fall in love with the religion of the emigrants from the East ! AVhy, what have we not done to convert them? We have thrashed them, and kicked them ; we have hung them on trees ; almost every gospel influence has been brought to bear upon them ; but the fellows will not be converted ! Well, it may be that some nations are outside of mercy. — Sermon : Christian Manhood in A merica. Maxy persons boil themselves down to a kind of molasses goodness ! IIow many there are that, like flies caught in some sweet liquid, have got out at last upon the side of the cup, and crawl along slowly, buzzing a little to clear their wings ! Just such Christians I have seen, creeping up the side of churches, soul-poor, imperfect, and drabbled. — All-sidedness in Christian Life. SECTS. — INSECTS. — PRECOCITY. — DISCORD. 51 All sects are merely pockets in the garments of the Lord Jesus Christ. And it does not make any difference whether you go to heaven in a side-pocket or in a skirt- pocket. To get into heaven is the main thing, after all. — Sermon : The Beauty of Moral Qualities. 1 HAVE no vicarious mission for these populous insects. But I will at least not despise their littleness, nor trample upon their lives. Yet, how may I spare them ? . At every step I must needs crush scores, and leave the wounded in my path ! Already 1 have lost my patience with that intolerable fly, and slapped him out of being, and breathed out fiery vengeance against those mean conspirators that, night and day, suck my blood, hypocritically singing a grace before their meal ! — Star Papers. Deliver me from premature saintship! I cannot endure to see a girl forty years old before she is five, or to see a boy imitating Isaiah or Dante when he is not yet out of his pantalets. — Sermon : The Training of Children. How they slander and backbite one another! But they do it because they think other churches are not orthodox. They play devil because they hate the Devil so. — Sermon : The Vital Principle. 52 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. Alas ! I am like a music-teacher, that stands the ■whole day teaching cubs how to paw the keys, and hears things mauled and murdered, until his hungry ear dies, almost, with his tasks. — Sermon : The Beauty of Moral Qualities. I HAD an idea that heaven was a place where every- body could sing, and was singing ; but the subject- matter of what they sang, I had no conception of. I was brought up in a back-country, where singing was a duty performed as best it might be by those who engaged in it; and my suggestions and imaginations concerning it were not very radiant. I had a notion that the saints stood around the throne, and sang ; and my imagination had been helped by seeing long rows of angels, like wax candles, represented in pictures. I had an idea that angels stood about the throne, very white and very pure, and recited before God what they thought of him. I did not like it, and I thought I was a miserable wretch because I did not. — Lecture-room Talks : Praise and Prayer. Christianity looks in many of the exhibits that are made of it, intellectually and doctrinally, as a man would if he had been dead ten years, and there was nothing but his ghastly, gaping skull left of him. But when Paul speaks of Christianity, he speaks of it as a life which is glowing and beautiful. — Sermon : The Golden Net. THEOLOGIC DEITY. — DEVIL IN RELIGION. 53 Theologians have brought out God, and what a mis- erable mess they have made of it ! The creeds and cat- echisms as representing God are very much like the children's ark, where wooden chumps are made with stifE legs, of all sorts, to represent animals. The God of the creeds is very much like a wooden god, and, for that matter, made for children. — Sermon : Knowing God. I REMEMBER a minister who came to our house when I was a boy. He used to talk with us children on the subject of religion, and he told me some hobgoblin stories about bad boys. And, oh, they were the nauf/hdest, the wickedest, boys that ever lived ! He told me how a bad boy got sick, how he saw the Devil coming after him, and how he cried, " O mother, mother ! there is the Devil ! There he is as far as the onion-bed ! There he is coming through the gate ! There he is inside the door! " I saw forty devils in the air. I dreamed of them. I did not for years shake off the feeling of terror which that conversation produced on my mind. — Lecture- room Talks : Assurance of Salcation. Whether Ireland ever will be quiei, depends upon how many Irishmen emigrate. They are like whiskey, — not to be taken straight, but in mixture. — Sermon : The Year among the Nations, 54 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. Look at Herbert Spencer's God : it is nothing. It is exactly what the annual joke of our Professor Snell, in Amherst College, was, when he said, "Gentlemen, you will perceive this invisible ball ! " I do not revile Her- bert Spencer ; many of the stones that will shine out by and by in the completed temple of God will have come from his hands ; but I think his writings should be taken as the disciples took the wheat, which they ate, rubbing it in their hands. — Lectures on Preaching. Old Dr. Champion (one of the predecessors of my father's pulpit in Litchfield, Conn.), in the latter part of his ministry thought he had sinned away the day of grace, and that he was going to hell; and he never showed himself so much a Christian as in the disposition which he manifested at the time. If it was God's will that he should go there, he was willing to go. He did not know what he should do in hell, till one day he solved the ques- tion satisfactorily in his own mind, and said, " I will open a prayer-meeting there ! " He thought it would afford him some balm and consolation. I do not think that man ever got there. — Sermon : Sin against the Holy Ghost. If you will only make your ideal mean enough, you can every one of you feel that you are heroic. — Sermon : The Use of Ideals. INDIVIDUALITY. — RESTLESS AMBITION. 55 I SUPPOSE, if we were to be apportioned off to our dif- ferent follies, it would take me ten years to repent of my folly in trying to be what I was never cut out to be. I tried my very hardest to be Brainerd ; and I should have succeeded, if God had not fixed it so that I could not. I tried to be Payson ; but Payson was dyspeptic, and I was not. I tried to be Henry Martyn, and wanted to be a missionary, and sit under a tree in Persia, and say the things that he said, and think the things that he thought. In Amherst, I tried to live up to those ideals ; but I could not do it. "Who would think of pouring out on his plate mustard and vinegar and pepper, and such things, and making a dinner of them ? These things are good to wake up and quicken the appetite, but are not to be used as steady food ; and so those lives are good as examples for the purpose of stimulation, but they are to be used with discrimination. No man is to sit before any of these ideals for his portrait. You might as well send your neighbor to the photographer's to sit for your picture, or to the tailor to be measured for your clothes, because you admire his looks, as to take for your pattern of life men who are themselves, but not you. — Sermon : The Merci- fulness of the Bible. Everybody has a chance for every thing, we are told ; everybody is born to be somebody, in this country. And therefore everybody is a-whirling and a-whizzing from the very cradle. — Sermon : Borrowing Trouble. 56 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. No man, then, need hunt among hair-shirts ; no man need seek for blankets too short at the bottom and too short at the top; no man need resort to iron seats or cushionless chairs; no man need shut himself up in grim cells ; no man need stand on the tops of towers or col- umns, — in order to deny himself. — Sekmon : Problem of Joy and Suffering in Life. I DO not want to hatch crows. Not for me are such birds. Birds of paradise, I want. I want canary-birds. I want larks. I want singing-birds. And you cannot have your plumage too gay. — Sermon : The Right and the Wrong Way of Giving Pleasure. The plague-stricken city has a great many persons that are sentimentally affected by the sufferings of the poor, — a great many that feel very much for the poor ; and the feeling is expended in " Ohs ! " and " Ahs ! " of persons that are getting ready with all their might to go off into the country. — Sermon : Conduct, the Index of Feeling. There is nothing more common than for men to hang one motive outside whei-e it can be seen, and keep the others in the background to turn the machinei'y. — Sermon : Paul and Demetrius. SELF-DECEFTION. — INFL UENCE. — VIRTUE. 57 A MAN in a very humble frame of mind says, "I am afraid I do not do all^that I do fi'om that single motive, a desire to honor and glorify God. I think I have detected something else." Oh ! you have detected something else, have you ? You are like an owl that creeps out of the tree about ten o'clock in the morning, and hoots, and says, " I think I see the sun's light somewhere." One would suppose that it might be light at that time — to any thing but an owl ! — Sermon : Motives of Action. I WISH you could stay in my house a month, and hear the applications that I have made to me by people who are out of business to get them employment. You know, I have so much influence! About half of New York think Town Washington, and Central Park, and Prospect Park, and the Brooklyn Navy-Yard, and the New- York Cus- tom-House, and sundry other great inheritances, and feel, if they do not get a position in one of these places when they apply, that it is on account of sheer ugliness on my part ! And yet, I never say No, nor turn away a well- meaning young man from my door, without a sigh. — Sermon : Earning a Licelihood. Men mean to get to heaven, but they do not mean that it shall cost them any more virtue than they can possibly help. — Sermon : Watchfulness. 58 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. There are many persons who are believed to be chil- dren of grace, but who make it a point, once a day, at any rate, to eat themselves into a fair condition of stupidity. — Sermon : Physical Causes and Spiritual States. You should eat as you would fire an engine ; and sleep, remembering that out of sleep comes the whole foi'ce of wakefulness, with the power you have in it. — Lectures on Preaching. I SHOULD as soon think of going into my barn-yard and saying, " O Alderneys ! be careful about giving too much milk," as I should think of saying to men, " Avoid getting rich." I do not care how much milk my cows have. If it is good, rich milk, the more thei-e is of it, the better I like it. I have never exhorted men not to seek wealth ; but I have said to men, " Riches alone do not make manhood, nor produce happiness." A man may be rich, and be a fool. A man may be rich, and be miser- able. — Sermon : Earning a Livelihood. Suppose a man that had wolves' cubs to bring up, should compare himself with another man tliat had lambs to bring up ? It is one thing to bring up lambs, and another thing to bring up wolves' cubs. — Sermon : As a Little Child. CHURCHES. — EMOTIONS. — CITIES. — FACTS. 59 The church is not obligatory any more than Fulton Ferry is. I can refuse to cross the river on the ferry- boat, and say, " I won't pay the cent or two cents. I am going to swim." I should have a right to swim if I pre- ferred, but I should be a fool if I did. And if you say, " I do not want to join the church," you are under no obligation to join it. — Sermon : As a Little Child. You cannot have antagonistic feelings together. If a child is angry, the nurse tries to make him laugh ; and he won't, he strives against it, because, when the laugh comes, away goes the temper. — Sermon : The Religious Uses of Music. Men talk to you about the great mischief which arises from young men leaving the country for the city. But talking against it is talking against the wind. You might as well read a lesson about the impropriety of the Gulf Stream rolling up and warming England, and leav- ing Greenland untouched. — Sermon : Lessons from the Great Chicago Fire. Never let a man in your congregation detect you in an inaccuracy if you can help it. If you speak about making wine, be sure you know about making it. (To do that, it is not necessary that you should know how to drink it, however.) — Lectures on Preaching. 60 BEECH ER AS A HUMORIST. On the north-east side of our little pet farm there was, upon survey, found to be a jog, or angle. The line did not run from a given point straight through, but turned abruptly west, and then at right angles north. As soon as the plot of ground was mapped, we conceived a dis- like to that corner. It looked as if the next lot was pok- ing its horns into our sides. We did not fancy such an intrusive angle. The more we looked at it, the less we liked it. How to straighten our line became a very serious problem. To do it by cutting off any y>axt of our own acres was not to be thought of. To buy more land when you have enough, would be even worse. But who that owns an acre can resist the temptation of another acre ? Whether we bought or sold is nothing to the reader; but that line is straightened, and there is no jog in our east line, and the map looks very well, and we have not lost any ground. And we have a little more room for our orchard ! — Eyes and Ears. Nobody is so hard toward shiftless people as those tight, prudent people who are never shiftless. It would do you good if God would make you shiftless for about a month, and put you where you woiild receive the kicks and cuffs of men's lips. Then, when you go back to yourself again, you would have some compassion on men who are weak, and do not know how to get along. — Sermon : Beuriny One Another's Burdens. NE W-COMERS. — PRE A CUING. — SAL VA TION. 6 1 The pumpkin-seed may be dropped in any corn-field, or in a mere hedge-row; and it waits but a few days before it lifts up the soil, and emits two great, honest, spoon-shaped leaves, that stand looking about in simple surprise, as if the world looked greatly different from ■what they expected. — Eyes and Ears. The essential necessity is, that every preacher should be able to speak, whether with or without notes. Christ " spake." Peter, on the day of Pentecost, did not put on his specs, and read ; nor did any other apostle when called on to preach. — Lectures on Preaching. These newsboys stand at the head of a street, and send down their voice through it, as an athlete would roll a ball down an alley. We advise men training for speaking-professions to peddle wares in the streets for a little time. Young ministers might go into partnership with newsboys a while, till they got their mouths open, and their larynx nerved and toughened. — Eyes and Ears. You cannot expect that a man, while he is struggling to get out of the water, and on to the shore, will practise a dancing-master's paces. — Sermon : Treasure that cannot be Stolen. G2 BEECIIER AS A UUMORIST. Oh, hear men quarrel about churches ! Look at the churches, and see what they are. Where is thei'e a church that is much more than a raft for bringing men across the dehige ? Some are a little better, and some are a little worse ; but all are imperfect and poor. — Sermon : Working with God. I SHOULD like to see if men who stand still and do nothing are clothed like lilies. I notice that they who literally attempt to live without taking thought as to how they shall be clothed, are tatterdemalions. I should like to see if men would have all the food they want without taking thought. As I see them, they are eating out of swill-pails and garbage-carts, and are running round with baskets for scraps and fragments. Who are the men that are the best clothed and fed ? Are they the men who do not take any thought or care? It almost astounds one to think how very opposite the facts are from what the text says. If you take it literally, it kills. — Sermon : The BibU to he Spiritually Interpreted. Natural genius is but the soil, which, let alone, runs to weeds. If it is to bear fruit and harvests wortli the reaping, no matter how good the soil is, it must be ploughed and tilled with incessant care. — Lectures on Preaching, REFORMERS. — BO YS. 63 All men are full of dogs. Temper is a snarly cur ; destructivenoss is a bull-dog; combativeness is a hound, that runs and barks and bites. We are full of dogs. When I was a boy, I would go over to Aunt Bull's, ■who had several ugly dogs about her premises. I used to go barefooted, and make as little noise as possible, and climb over fences, and go a roundabout way, so as, if possible, to get into the house before the dogs knew that I was coming. If I had acted as many reformers do, I should have gone with my pockets full of stones, and fired handful after handful at the dogs, and in the universal barking and hullabaloo should have said, " See ■what a condition of things this is ! What a reformation is needed here ! How the dogs bark and bite ! " Who made them do it ? Thousands of men are set to barking, and venomously biting, because that which is bad in them is so treated that it is roused up, not only into oppugnancy, but into domiuaucy. — Sermon : Peaceable- ness. He is not a Sunday-school boy at all. He is not fit to have his life written, and put into a library ; but he is just as nimble as a grasshopper. He runs and jumps first, and then considers where he lands. And the most amusing thing is, to see the mother moaning and worry- ing about the child. Work and wait. Do not remit any work ; but the worry, — remit that. — Sermon : Patience. G4 BEECIIER AS A nUMORIST. Long live the chestnut-tree, and the chestnut woods on the mountain-side, and the boys and girls who frolic under their boughs! And long live the winter nights, with the homely fare of apples and nuts, and no stronger drink than cider ; and a merry crowd of boys and girls, with here and there the spectacled old folks ; all before a roaring hickory-fire, in an old-fashioned fireplace, big as the Western horizon with the sun going down in it, and with a roguish stick of chestnut wood in it, which opens such a fusillade of snaps and cracks as sets the girls to screaming, and throws out such mischievous coals upon the calico dresses, as obliges every humane boy to run to the relief of his sweetheart all on fire 1 No doubt, many an old gentleman will read this article with a face growing moi-e and more full of smiles, and taking off his spectacles at the end, and looking kindly over at his aged dame, will say, "Do you remember, Polly, when we were at Squire Judson's ? " — " Well, well, father, you are too old to be talking about such youthful follies." Nevertheless, she smiles, and looks kindly over at the old rogue, who kissed her that night, proposed on the way home, and was married before Christmas. — Eyes and Ears. The opinion of Solomon is not shared by men very generally. Conceit is very much in repute. People who are conceited, by no means think that they are fools : they think that Solomon was one. — Sermon : Conceit. PRAYER. — THE CLERGYMAN'S SPHERE. 65 Did you ever know a person who could pray down an arithmetic? Did you ever know a person who, going to school, and finding himself puzzled by a tough prob- lem, could get it solved by asking God to solve it f©r him? Did you ever know anybody to accomplish any thing intelligently except by legitimate head-work ? — Lecture-room Talks : Ansiuers to Prayer. Suppose a person should say, " Here I have been shaking with chills and fever for weeks and months, and all the time there has been Peruvian bark next door, with which I might have cured myself, if I had known that it would cure me ; but I did not know it, though I constantly prayed God to cure me." You would say at once, " No prayer will ever bring you medicine. You must know that it exists, and then apply it, in obedience to natural laws, or it will not meet your case." — Lecture-room Talks : Answers to Prayer. A minister is not a man to know books alone. . . . You ought to know what is done in the barn, in the cellar, in the vineyard, and everywhere. You ought to know and understand a naturalist's enthusiasm when he finds a new flower or a new bug, — that ecstasy is almost like a heaven of heavens to the apocalyptic Johul — Lectures on Preaching. 66 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. " A catalogue! " Good as a garden, madam, if you only think so. "A paper garden!" Yes, sir, a printed garden, and, if you only have eyes, as good as ever was made of dirt, and in some things a deal better! With my catalogue before me, I go on through the long list ; and every flower of them stands up before me, just as the sun will kiss them, and the wind shake hands with them, next summer. Yea, finer ! I shall never have such columbines in my garden as I carry in my head. I shall never see such bowers of morning-glories at Peekskill as spring up out of my catalogue. See those asters : was there ever a mortal bed of such mag- nificent blossoms as I see right before me ? "Where?" " There ! Don't you see ? " " I see nothing but your open pamphlet." "Oh, well! 'Eyes have they, but they see not.' Any fool could see what is right before him. To see what is not here, that is the true sight." And then, I have no trouble with my airy garden. I get along with the work so fast. There are no grubs in it, no rose-bugs, no aphides. Every thing grows without mildew or blight. This garden in the air is the only place that I know of where human nature is perfect, gardening in- expensive, luck always good, the season always fine, and flowers always a success. — Star Papers: Hortus Siccus. PREACnERS. — ELECTION. — APPRECIATION. 67 It is supposed that a moral teacher must be a poor, dapper, nice little man, shut up to a kind of musical service of the sanctuary, where he has to stand like a feeble taper in a golden candlestick, or pipe out his lit- tle homily. — Sermon : Sphere of the Christian Minister. Thk Church of the Future will be no little ark carry- ing forty persons across the flood, and leaving all the rest of the world to drown. — Sermon : The Church of the Future. Tommy Taft met the minister at the door, and put out his great, rough hand to shake. " Thankee, Doctor, thankee ; very well done. Couldn't do it better myself. It'll do good — know it ! Feel bet- ter myself : I need just such preachin' — mouldy old sinner • — need a scourin' about once a week. Drefful wicked to hev such doctrine, and not be no better — ain't it, Doc- tor? " — Norwood. Never be grandiloquent when you want to drive home a searching truth. Don't whip with a switch that has the leaves on, if you want it to tingle. — Lectures on Preaching. There are no storms among thistle-down. — Sermon : A Bruised Reed. 68 BEECIIER AS A HUMORIST. An eminent man, once, when a person was boasting in his presence, and saying that he thought he had over- come all his sinful tendencies, took a glass of water and dashed it in the man's face : he found out that the devil was there yet, not destroyed, though hidden ! — Sermon : Physical Hinderances in Sjnritual Life. The best of all properties in a speaking-hall, is a man that knows how to speak, and has something to speak with! What does a rooster care for acoustic aids? He mounts a fence lustily, gives a preliminary flap of his wings as if to say, " I could have flown twice as high," and then lets off a crow tliat rings and echoes for a mile ai'ound. A bull will sound you a bass-note that would make old Westminster Abbey shake. A crow will caw to you at two miles distance without the fear of bron- chitis. A dog will bark to a whole town without the slightest inconvenience — to himself. And yet men, who are brought up to speaking as the business of their lives, cannot make themselves heard at a hundred feet distance, or, only by exertions that send them home for liniments, bandages, and caustic! — Eyes and Ears. If one has sought rest in the country, he will be con- scious of the distinct luxury of sounds in distinction from noise. — Eyes and Ears. MODEST MERIT. — CLIMBING. — PRAISE. G9 My dear Aunt Esther, who brought me up, — a woman so good and modest that she will spend ages in heaven wondering how it happened that she ever got there, while the angels will always be wondering why she was not there from all eternity. — Fruits, Floioer.t, and Fanning. There is a cat on a tree by my house. She went up last night clear into the topmost branches, and there she sits yet, for a cat cannot come down head first ; the claws w^ere made to work the other way : and to get down, she has to turn round and back down. It is just the opposite with men. It is a great deal easier for them to come down than to go uj). — Sermon : The Fruits of Patience. It is quite in vain for a man to eat so that he is dyspeptic, and at the same time attempt to live in a state of grace. — Sermox : Physical Causes and Spiritual States. An ! when a man is dead, and you are sure that he is out of the way, you can afford to praise him. It is when men are living that we are not so charitable. I have not the least particle of prejudice against the thistles that were on my place last year. It is those that are there now that I do not like. — Sermom : Using One's Life for Others. 70 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. Is it stealing to take a dandelion through the fence ? Then we have made a gap in the Commandments a good many times. But are ethical rules quite as rigid upon dandelions as upon ducats and dollars? At any rate, we have never had remorse for pulling the first dandelion — if we could reach it. — Eyes and Ears. " ' Deacon Marble,' says I, ' if you would shove out of ye all your knowin's that ain't worth knowin', and then fill up with sober matter, you would be a sight better deacon, and a better man.' " ♦' That's much so with folks in general." " Yes : folks ' heads is pretty much like their garrets, •where all the rubbish and broken things they've no use for down-stairs are stored away." — Norwood : Polly Marble. Many a man owes a great deal of his virtue to the fact of his having been kept busy. " Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do." Though Dr. Watts wrote that for children, you had better carry it through life. It will be as good for you at eighty as it was at eight. — Sermon : Physical Hinderunces in Spiriluul Life. I SET myself against the pope, only when he attempts to be my pope. I do not want him. I am pope enough for myself. — Sermon : Reason in Religion. SCANT VIRTUES. — YANKEES. — HUMAN BOGS. 71 If a savage has a string of beads around his neck, and something in his ears, he is immensely tickled with his own beauty. And you laugh at him. But Christians are just like him. They have two or three tinkling virtues that they put on which cover a part of their nakedness, and leave the rest uncovered. — Sermon : Beauty. You may scout the Yankee as much as you please, but it has been that Calviuistically-bred Yankee brain that has made the foundations of this government firm and secure. It was the Yankee conscience that smote the devil of slavery and destroyed it ; and it is the Yankee heart that will build schoolhouses all over the land, and defend the poor and weak, and make justice the stability of our times. — Sermon : Special Divine Providence. "When barnyard-fowls find a morsel of food, they " cluck, cluck, cluck," and let every fowl have a chance ; but when dogs find a bit of meat, they grab it, and run and hide, that they may have it all to themselves. INIen take after dogs in this particular ! — Sermon : The Mercifulness of the Bible. Oftentimes the difference between hopeful men and melancholy men is simply the difference of their diges- tion. — Lectures to Young Men : Practical Hints. 72 BEECnER AS A HUMORIST. " Miss Palfry, have you seen a man come across here this mornin' — a rather big man — a little cast in one eye — looks as though he was winkin' at you all the time — red hair, wears it long — and has a red handkerchief round his neck ? Rides on a gray horse — well, some- thing of the size of Cathcart's yonder? " " A man with red hair and hawdkerchief ? " "Yes." " On a gray horse ? " " Yes — with a long tail." " Let me see — Polly ! — here, Polly ! — have you seen a man this mornin' comin' across, with red hair ? " Hiram struck in — " With red hair, and white-tail horse ? " " About what time ? " "How do I know? That's what I want to find out. He had a porkmanty behind him, and a green um- brella." " AVal, I guess he hain't come along yet. Shall I tell him any thing if he comes ? " " Yes ; tell him that I think he had better stop, when he gits where he wants to go to." And with that he gave a shai-p cluck, or sort of throat- whistle, which every horse understands, and in a moment disappeared in the covered bridge. The woman looked after him with the slightest possible look of humorous vexation. "Go 'long, you old fool ! I don't believe he's expectin' anybody. Well, I shall learn one of these days not to -7 LA UGHTER. — KNO W LEDGE. — BE A UTY. 73 believe a word Hiram saj's. Might 'a* known he was qiiizzin' — shouldn't wonder if he died laughiu', and cracked jokes at his own funeral! " — Norwood. Woe be to that man who has lost all power of blossom- ing ! Woe be to that man who has come out from under the burden and cares of life with no power of singing, of being merry, and of gambolling like a boy — not spelling it as they spell it in Wall Street, but as they spell it in poetry. Blessed is the man who can throw the light and radiance of his imagination', of his wit and humor, all through his life 1 — Sermox : They have their Reward. It would be very absui-d for an owl in an ivy-bush to read lectures on optics to an eagle, or for a mole to coun- sel a lynx on the sin of sharp-sighteduess. — Lectures TO Young IMen : Portrait-Gallery. If a man could swing the rainbow as a hammock, and sleep in it, how the poet would rejoice in that ! — Sermon : Beauty. Complaint is often made of ministers that they meddle with things they do not understand. I think they do, when they preach theology. — Sermon : Sphere of the Christian Minister. 74 BEECH ER AS A HUMORIST. People are very much like fishes. Whales take vast quantities of water into their mouths for the sake of the animalculse it contains, and then blow out the water, while keeping in the food. People do pretty much the same. They don't believe half that you say. The part that is nutritious they keep, and the rest they let alone. — Lectures on Preaching. Suppose I should go to God and say, " Lord, be pleased to give me salad," he would point to the garden, and say, " There is the place to get salad; and, if you are too lazy to work for it, you may go without." — Lecture-room Talks: Answers to Prayer. *' Great sermons," ninety-nine times in a hundred, are nuisances. They are like steeples without any bells in them ; things stuck up high in the air, serving for ornament, attracting observation, but sheltering nobody, "warming nobody, helping nobody. — Lectures on Preaching. Do you suppose I study musty old books when I want to preach ? No, I stuily ■jinii. Wlicn I want to know more about the doctrine of depravity, I study you; and I have abundant illustrations on every side. — Sermon: Sphere of the Christian Minister. SCEPTICS. — GRO WTH. — GI VING. — FLIES, lb People look upon a man who has said he is a sceptic as though he had the small-pox. A man has as much right to be a sceptic as he has to be sick ; and that is a universal right. He is a man who will not eat hay, but wants fresh grass. — Sebmon: Concord, not Unison. A MAN comes to me, and says, " I understand you have been sitting for your portrait." He goes and sees it, and comes back and says, " Is that a portrait of you ? Why, I understood that the painter was a great artist." — "But," I say, " he has not got through with it yet : that is only the first stage. It won't be as handsome as I am for six or seven sittings." Everybody would understand that. — Sekmon : The Personal Injiuence of God. I don't think that when I was presented with a book, being eight years old, and was told that it would do me good as long as I lived, I felt lialf as much gratitude as I did when Aunt Bull gave me a doughnut. I understood the doughnut. The book was too much for me. — Ser- mon : Generosity and Liberality. There are two degrees in this art ; viz., F.H. and F.C., — fly-hunting and fly-catching. The first is easy, but few can have a diploma for the last. — Eyes and Ears. 76 BE EC HER AS A HUMORIST And if heaven be a place of propriety ; if it be a place in which everybody is regimented ; if it be a place where, at stated times, we shall turn and bow one way, and then tm-n and bow the other way, and say our prayers, and repeat our hymns, — if that be heaven, it is a mechani- cal heaven; it is an automaton's heaven ; it is a machine- heaven, and a poor one at that. — Sermon: The Name of Jesus. I STRUCK the horse with a switch, and he broke into a canter. Knowing how disagreeable it was to change from a canter to a trot, I kept him in a full canter till he reached the brook's edge ; and there he stojiped sud- denly — but I did not! The liquid argument that fol- lowed was one which I never forgot. I rode better the third time for my mishap the second time. I never needed to ride after anybody after that. — Sermon : The Law of Liberty. That which is very good for a bug, is very poor for a Christian. — Sermon ; Wsing One's Life for Others. A TRUE gentleman is different from anybody else, even if he is sea-sick ; and if there is a greater test than that, 1 do not know what it is I — Sermon : Treasure that cannot be Stolen. CIRCUMSTANCES. — BIBLE-READING. 77 During the days when color was a virtue, in a famous chui'ch in New York a distinguished merchant had a col- ored man in his pew. The presence of that colored man in the congregation had the same effect that a lump of salt would have in a cup of tea. The whole congrega- tion, with an eternity to consider, thought only of the colored man in that merchant's pew. And as they went out of the church, various persons gathered about the merchant, and said, " What possessed you to bring that nigger into your pew ? " He whispered and said to them, " He is a great planter, and he is rich : he is a mil- lionnaire." And then they said, "Introduce us to him ! Introduce hiin to usl " — Sermon : Self-Conlrol Possible to AIL You put your Bible in your book-case. There it stands all the week, perhaps. Or, you read it once a day, or once a week, as the case may be. And you do it very decorously. Your room is still, and your children sit around the room in a stiff row. You put on your spectacles and read ; and as you read, you lower the key of your voice, — for when men want to be religious, they always take a solemn note, — and you read all the way through the chapter, and are like a blind man walking along a road where there are all sorts of flowers on both sides, never seeing a single one. Men read thus, and feel a great deal better because they have read the Bible to their family ! — Sermon : The Beauty of Moral Qualities. u. 78 BEECIIER AS A HUMORIST. I WILL endeavor to keep peace with every living thing that God doth daily nourish, and year by year renew. Postscript. — I except mosquitoes; also, cockroaches; also, aphides on my flowers ; also, the house-spiders ; and the rats, of course ; and other people's cats, and vagrant dogs; and hawks that come after my chickens; and marmots that desolate my cabbage-patch. In short, like most others, I am a peace-man, except when I wish to fight. — Stak Papers : Living Languages. They baptize infants to efface original sin, aboriginal sin, by which they mean the smut that comes down through life from rubbing against Adam. — Sermon: Adam and Christ. Almost without a single exception, new halls and old ones are unventilated. The committee will point you to an auger-hole in some corner of the ceiling, and tell you that arrangements have been made for ventilation I You might as well insert a goose-quill in a dam to supply all Lowell with water for its mills ! — Eyes and Ears. An earthquake cannot take place in India that is not felt here, morally speaking. Ireland is as if within our national borders — and the greater part of it is. — Baptist Union : After-dinner Speech. UNCONSCIOUS CHRISTIANS. — EGGS. 79 My watch stops. Something is broken in it. I take it to the watch-maker, and he puts in a new mainspring. And then it does not go, perhaps ; but he gives it a little turning shake, and it couimences ticking and keeping time. I know many persons who have a mainspring in them, and have been wound up, for that matter, but who have not been shaken yet ! And there they are. If some- body would only take them up and whirl them round a few times, and say to them, " You are Christians; tick! tick!" they would commence keeping time and go on keeping time. — Lecture-room Talks : Answers to Prayer. Men in the ordinary stage are like robins' eggs in the nest: you cannot feed them. Let the robin sit on them a little while, and by and by there will be nothing but four mouths ; and as fast as you put in worms, they will gulp them. To educate in the cold and natural state is just like feeding eggs. Warm them, and give them life, and they will eat. — Lectures on Preaching, I THINK it would be a very wholesome thing in a min- ister's life, if once in a while, upon finding that he was not making much of a sermon, he should frankly confess it, and say, "Brethren, we will sing." — Lectures on Preaching. 80 BE EC HER AS A HUMORIST. When we children used to discuss the subject, Charles insisted that the Lord could not do every thing, — for instance, that he could not made a sheet of paper with only one side to it ! — Sermon : Pictures of Truth. Every one properly born and well brought up knows that hens' nests are fortuitous, and are always happening in the most sui'prising manner, and in the most unex- pected places. And though you bring all your great human brain to bear upon the matter, a silly old hen will tuck away a dozen eggs right under your eyes, and will walk forth daily after each instalment with a most domes- tic air and tone of taunting, saying, as j^lain as inarticulate sounds can proclaim it, " I've laid an egg ! I've laid an egg I I've laid another ! You can't find it ! You won't find it! I know you won't!" And sure enough we can't find it, and don't find it, until, after a due time, the gratified old fuss leads forth all her eggs with infinite duckings responsive to endless peepings 1 — Eyes and Ears. When a child says, " Will God give me any thing I ask him for ? " and the mother says, " Yes," he says, "Then I am going to ask him to give me a big apple." And men pray in like manner, asking God for what they want, and he answers by giving them what they ought to want. — Sermon : Tlie Sympathy of Christ. PLAIN PREACHING. — SUCCESS. — CATS. 81 Some justify the obscurities of their style, saying that it is a good practice for men to be obliged to dig for the ideas which they get. But I submit to you that working on Sunday is not proper for ordinary people in church ; and obliging your parishioners to dig and delve for ideas in your sermons, is making them do the very work you are paid a salary to do for them. — Lectures on Preaching. Coming to a fortunate point and striking out an illus- tration which arouses and interests them, — leave the ti'ack of your argument, and never mind what becomes of your elaborate sermon, and you will see the heavy and uninterested eyes lighting up again. "But," you say, "that will make my sermon unsymmetrical." Well, ■were you called to preach for the sake of the salvation of sermons ? Just follow the stream, and use the bait they are biting at, and take no heed of your sermon. — ■ Lectures on Preaching. I HAVE known men who have watched after professors of religion. I have a cat in the country, that, knowing that there is a rat in the drain, will lie crouched in the grass for six hours together, waiting for that rat to come out. And I know people who watch at doors where Christians are to come out, just as patiently, and with just as much humanity ! — Skrmon : Counting the Cost. 82 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. The majority of men want a priesthood. Say as much as you please about the objections of men to being priest-ridden: if they do not want to be priest-ridden, they want a priest to ride. Men want some one to fix things for them. People like to eat, but they don't like to cook. So men want a church that will settle their religion for them, and they revile those churches that do not do it. — Sermon : Bible Precepts to be Spiritually Interpreted. " They come to college to read all them books? I don't wonder it takes 'em four years. Do you s'pose Barton has got all this inside of him ? " " Very likely," said Hiram : " but it's mighty poor feed, I should think ; for the fellers that read most git the leanest." " Do you know which end they begin at ? " said Tonnny, with a curious awe. " Wal," said Hiram, " I've been here befoi'e, but I never saw many folks a readin' here. I guess the fellers play ball pretty much all summer, and read winters." — NoiiwoOD : Leacing College. Men have gone into caves to get rid of pride, but they have not got rid of it. If a turtle creeps into a hole, he is a turtle still. — Sermon : Physical Uinderances in Spiritual Life. SELFISHNESS. — A NXIE TY. — SEL F-HELP. 83 Men still believe that a modified amount of stinginess is good policy. Men still believe that men must look out for themselves, or nobody will look out for them ; and that if other people get in their way, they must take the consequences. Men conduct business just as a locomotive makes journeys. It is an immense iron machine, going at a terrific rate ; and if any thing gets on the track, it is lis lookout, and not the locomotive's. — Seumon : Scope and Function of a Christian Life. Imagine a short man dissatisfied with his shortness, trying to grow tall by fretting about it, ambitiously swell- ing, and saying, " I am but five feet high : how on earth shall I get to be six feet? " Will it do any good? Is there any thing more preposterous? There is no relation between anxiety and the result which you seek to obtain. — Sermon: Evils of Anxious Forethought. Household government is to teach the child how to take care of himself ; but he will not learn how to take care of himself' if he is done up in brown paper and tied with a string ! If a child is to do any thing, he must be trusted, and allowed to make mistakes. The world was made to make mistakes in. The place where they do not make mistakes is some way distant. — Sermon : Motives of Action. 84 BEECH ER AS A HUMORIST. If we can trace our lineage back to Alfred, or along some line of illustrious men, how noble we think that ! But when Mr. Darwin suggests tiuit we should trace our pedigree the other way, we are not so anxious to do it — though I think in many respects it would be easier 1 Disguise it as you will, the points in which we are alike are more in the animal direction than in any other. — Sermon : The Unity of Men. To your own INIaster you stand or fall. You might sit at the Lord's table with a pirate on one side of you, and a murderer on the other, and it would be no testimony that you believed in piracy or murder. It would simply be a testimony that you sought Christ for yourself. The Church of England has been thrown into a nine-days' hor- ror because a Socinian scholar was allowed to sit at table. They were not lords, giving entertainments to their peers : they were themselves but miserable sinners asking God's grace among other sinners equally miserable. — Sermon : . Tlie Liberty of the Gospel. Money, in the hands of one or two men, is like a dung- heap in a barn-yard. So long as it lies in a mass, it does no good ; but if it was only spread out evenly on the land, how every thing would grow 1 — Sermon : The Love of Money. MONEY. — AGNOSTICS. — LIFE. — FASTING. 85 Wealth unused is wealth that is dead. Unused wealth is of no more use to a community than are the men that lie in mausoleums a thousand years old — the dust of the sepulchre. Money is like powder : it has no po\ver until it is set off. — Sermon : Haste to be Rich. When a child is first born, what is it but a pulpy, ■warm little bit of animal, wrapped up in flannel ? — with- out original righteousness, without original orthodoxy, without original heterodoxy, without original arithmetic, witliout original rhetoric, without original any thing, though the organs are there. The most perfect know- nothing in the world is that of the cradle, agnostic from the beginning. — Sermon : Adam and Christ. I THINK that one reason why angels never go to theatres is that there is no theatre that has such comedies as human life. There are buffoons, there are comedians, innumerable, high and low, going through the most grotesque plays, — and ti-agedies, alas ! — Sermon : Evils of Anxious Forethought. Some ministers starve themselves till they have scarcely the substance of a mosquito, and then think they are sacred. — Sermon : Concord, not Unison. 86 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. An unexploded torpedo is peaceable, but we should not consider it an implement of peace. It has every- thing ready for an explosion when it is touched off. — Sekmon : Peaceable Living. I THINK I can get angry as quick as anybody : I do not tliink I am deficient in that Christian grace. But I never saw the man yet whom I would not have compas- sion for, after I had had time to think, and to couj^le him with his own trials, and reflect where he came from, who educated him, what sort of a tussle he had had in life, and what temptations and provocations he had been subjected to. — Sekmon: Peaceable Living. The old Greeks said that a man had two ears and one mouth, that he might hear twice and speak once; and there is a great deal of good sense in it. You will find that if you will simply hold your peace, you will pass over nine out of ten of the provocations of life. — Sermon : Peaceable Living. There are more quarrels smotliercd by just shutting your mouth, and holding it shut, than by all the wisdom in the world. — Sekmon : Peaceable Living. TOM 31 Y TAFT ON BABIES. — DEVILS. 87 "Parson Buell, it's the unaccountablest thing what the Lord sends children into tliis world for, considerin' what sort of a place 'tis, and what a time folks have in gettiu' thro' it. Lord ! They die off like apple-blossoms, half on 'em, afore they're bigger'n mice. And the rest of 'em have a hard time gittiu' grown; and when you've got 'em growed, half the folks are paddling round as if they didn't exactly know what they come on airth for; and nobody can tell 'em, for that matter. I never see babies but 1 think how we used to have birds come aboard ship, way out to sea — land-birds, and so tired, poor little things, and hungry ! You could go up to 'em, and take 'em in your hand, and they turned up their bright eyes with such a piteous look at you, as if they had come from ever so far, and lost their way, and didn't know where they were. Wall, that's about what I think of babies. "What do they come off to this 'ere world for ? Why don't they stay where they're well off ? " — Norwood : Tommy Taft. No man likes to have the devil cast out of him. There is as much squealing, and running down hill, and pitching into the sea now, as there was in the time of our Saviour. And you will take notice, that, when passions come out of men, they generally take the form of hogs. It is the lower passions, it is the animal, after all that is dispossessed; and that the animal resists. — Sermon : TJie Beauli/ of Moral Qualities. 88 BEECIIER AS A HUMORIST. I DO not preach every thing that I tliink. Why do I not ? Because I do not know that I believe it yet. There is nothing in this world that requires such long seasoning and ripening as new thoughts. JNIen seem to think that the pulpit ought to be like an apple-press where greedy boys run, and each sticks his straw into the vat, and sucks the unfermented juice. The farmer would say to the boys, "No: let the juice stand, and let the impurities be worked off ; and then, in six or eight months, you will see the real, true cider, or wine of the apples." And so it is with truth. — Sermon : The Liberty of ike Gosjjel. There are some children that really seem born in tlie wrong world, they are so good ; but as a general rule, almost all saints among children die early. They do not hold out a great while. If they live, they are not saints; and if they are saints, they do not live, for the most part. — Sermon : The Riches of God. There are some men who have to promote piety by having a prayer for every hour. If any man really requires such regularity and frequency of prayer, if he is a multiplication table with the skin pulled over it, let him pray so. It is his liberty, and why do you rail at it ? But if a man is made as I am, he could not do it. — Sermon : 2'he Nature of Liberty. LAND-FO VERTY. — DANGER. — SIIALLO WS. 89 What would it avail me, if I owned a section of land ten miles wide through to the Pacific Ocean? How much of it could I cultivate, or even look at? What could I do with it, if I had it? There is such a thing as being made poor by abundance. And yet, men go on seeking wealth with an insane ambition. — Sermon : Thoughts of Death. Being born is dangerous enough. And it is danger- ous to live. It is more and more dangerous to live as you grow and develop. It is dangerous to read, and it is dangerous not to read. It is dangerous to use your eyes, and it is dangerous not to use them. It is danger- ous not to believe enough, and it is dangerous to believe too much. Men are but stumbling machines. Things never go in right lines and symmetries. Men grope, and the world gropes, in matters that touch the deep founda- tions of happiness. And among the mysteries of time is the fact that men are left with all the responsibilities and all the risks of exploration, with its mistakes, its over - actions, and its under - actions. — Sermon: The Inspiration of Scripture. Did you ever see a brook only an inch deep that could have waves twenty feet high? If a man is shal- low enough, he will not be deeply moved. — Sermon: God 's Workmanship in Man. 90 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. Of all surgery in the world, that which is most skilful, that which is learned soonest, and that which needs the least skill, is the surgery by which you can make a lance out of your tongue, with which to gash and sear men. — Sermon: Use of the Tongue. The world has too much to do to think about fools; and, therefore, men who spend their lives in imposing themselves upon their fellow-men, when tliey die, die thoroughly, — die all through, and are forgotten. — Sermon : Earthly Immortality. If you must vocalize, vocalize; bl^t there is not a man that shouts " Hallelujah I " who feels more than the man that cannot shout, because he feels so much. — Sermon : Religious Fervor. Does a philosopher think that he is the father of philosophy? He is the child of it. It made him in- stead of his making it. — Sermon : The Power of God's Truth. Gluttony and intemperance need no help. They go without crutches in this world, though they bring men to crutches very speedily. — Sermon : The Right and the Wrong Way of Giving Pleasure. DAVID. — COTTON MATHER. — CHRISTIANS. 91 Some men say that the Psalms of David are not in- spired. 1 will not now dispute whether they are inspired or not ; but I know that no other such hymnals ever went sounding on through three thousand years of the world's history, developing power and sweetness as they went. They sang, and taught the world to sing. If they are not inspired, they have an admirably good substitute for inspiration. — Sermon : The Inspiration of Scripture. One of the Mathers — Cotton IMather, I think it was — had an almost ridiculous way of spiritualizing every thing he saw. When he was walking along the street, if he saw a tall man, he would say, " May he be tall in grace ! " If he saw a short man, he would say, " May he be short in sin ! " There was something queer in the habit as he carried it out ; but in the idea of giving to every common event a spiritual suggestion, there was nothing queer. It was pre-eminently wise. — Lecture- room Talks : Realization of ChrisCs Presence. I NEVER make a mistake in judging of flowers. I never smell of a nettle or a thistle thinking it is a honeysuckle. I never go astray in autumn in regard to my grape-vine. Are Christians of such a disposition that you can mark them sure? — Sermon: '■^ My Yoke is Easy." 92 BE EC HER AS A HUMORIST. A NEST is good for a robin while it is an egg, but it is bad for a robin when it has got wings. It is a poor place to fly in, but it is a good place to be hatched in. Institutions always dig their own graves if they are good for any thing. In an educatory institution that is good for any thing, men become larger than the institution. — Sermon : The Perfect Manhood. Suppose I should invite an Englishman to my house, and, as soon as he had taken his seat, should begin on him, and say, by way of entertaining him, " Do you, sir, think that a queen is as good as a president? Do not you think that a monarchy is about as good as any government on the face of the earth?" That which we would scorn to do in the family, that which we would consider a breach of politeness in the household, men are perpetually doing in churches and assemblies of Christian men ; and, in doing it, they think they are serving God, and obeying their own consciences ! — Sermon : Tlie Apostolic Theory of Preaching. You must learn to be good haters — but not of men. That is not the text. You do not need any thing to in- struct you on that point. You are too good in that already ! You are to abhor evil. — Sermon : Abhorrence of Evil. CHARITY. — FRENCH ART. — HYMNS. 93 There is a good deal of benevolence, but it does not get around much. It stays at home for the most part, and does not become acquainted with its neighbors. — Sermon : Unprojilahle Servants. I Ai\r heartily tired of French nakedness. Their sec- ond-rate painters seem to abhor nothing so much as linen. I think myself not to be fastidious in such things. I am willing always to see the liuman form sculptured or painted when it seems to subserve a good purpose. If it be natural that it should under such and such circum- stances be disrobed, I do not turn away from it, provided the sentiment is noble, and predominates to such a degree as to make the condition of the figure a secondary and scarcely perceived affair. But ... I am sick of naked harems. The Turk refuses a sight of his women, even when di'essed. The French are courteous to the other extreme. I could not help feeling, at length, and not alone of this gallery, that a yard of linen would be, of itself, almost an object of beauty ; and quite original, too, as an idea of art, among a certain class of French painters. — Star Papers : Gallery of the Luxembourg. A THOUSAND sermons can't put down heresy so fast as a hundred hymns. — Remarks at the Silver Weddinc], Plymouth Church, Oct. 10, 1872. 94 BEECnER AS A HUMORIST. The man who makes a bargain with you to-morrow will know whether you are converted or not. When a man is converted, he is converted into benevolence. No man was ever converted into stinginess. — Sermon: Aims and Methods of Christian Life. I HONOR a woman who comes to me, when I call at her house, in just the dress that is suited to the work which she is doing. If I am swallowed up in an abyss of plush in the parlor three-quarters of an hour waiting, that she may come down with her Sunday suit on, I do not thank her. If, on the contrary, I call at a house, and the woman is kneading bread, and she comes to me saying, " It is impossible, sir, but that I must see you as I am," that is just the way I am glad to see her. — Seriion: The True Law of the Household. Clothes that are a very good fit for children when they are six years old, are a very bad fit when they are sixteen, and must be let out, or they will split out in every direction. — Sermon: Individual Responsibility. The Lord's garment is large enough to cover all sects, and to leave room for nations to camp under it besides. — Sermon: Moral Theory of Civil Liberty. SnUT YOUR MOUTH. — SEX. 95 Wk heard a lad, in anger, use this expression to an- other. It was not very bad advice, though given some- what roughly. When we hear some of our mincing misses singing, now away up, and now away down, tossing their heads, and rolling their eyes, we think, Well, miss, if you knew what folks thought of you, you'd shut your mouth. We have seen many men ruined because they did not know how to shut their mouth when tempted to say " Yes," to a bad business. When we see a man standing before the bar just ready to drink, we think, Ah, you fine fellow I if you will not keep your mouth shut befoi-e that bar, you will, by and by, find yourself before a Bar where it will be shut tight enough. When we hear a fine lady scolding till every room rings; or tattling from house to house; or scandal- mongering, — we think, Ah, my lady ! with all your schooling, you never learned to shut your mouth. — Fruits, Flowers, and Farming. A woman's nature will never be changed. Men might spin and churn, and knit and sew and cook, and rock the cradle, for a hundred generations, and not be women. And woman will not become man by external occupa- tions. God's colors do not wash out. Sex is dyed in the wool. — Sermon : Thaiiksgicing. 96 BEECnER AS A HUMORIST. Whex, during the great disaster at New Hamburg, men were rushing into crowds to rescue from tlie wrecked cars those that were in them, or to drag from the water those who had been thrown into it, do you suppose it was necessary for them to stop and say, " Ai-e you a Rej^ubli- oan, or are you a Democrat? — Because I am not going to be seen working alongside of a man not of my political belief, and have people suppose that I indorse all his abominable political doctrines " ? Would not that have been monstrous ? And yet, in Brooklyn, within my time, for years and years, the Sunday schools of the Unitarian churches were not allowed to walk in proces- sion with the Sunday schools of the orthodox chui'ches on annivei'sary days ; and the Unitarian churches had to draw ofE their schools, and form processions on other days, because it was feared that the little orthodox children would catch some heresy from the little Unitarian chil- dren if they were allowed to walk with them in the streets ! Over the scene, Christ was sad, and the Devil was glad! — SeRiMON : The Liberty of the Gospel. The trouble is, people are hungry in the stomach, and not in the head. People should be hungry with the eye and the ear as well as with the mouth. If all a man's necessaries of life go in at the port-hole of the stomach, it is a bad sign. — Lectures to Young Men : Practical Hints. THE BIBLE. — SECTARIANISM. — OATHS. 97 The Bible is like a telescope. If a man looks through his telescope, then he sees worlds beyond ; but if he looks at his telescope, then he does not see any thing but tliat. — Sermon : The Wmj of Coming to Christ. Yea, and I believe that God will open the minds of the Brooklyn Sunday-school Union so that the children of the Universalist Sunday school will parade with the other Sunday-school children on Anniversary Day. [Applause.] When that last device of the Devil, that concentration of meanness, the jealousy or hatred of sectionalism, is swept away, I will throw up my cap in the street, yea, in the church, and shout with joy. That day is coming ; and you Baptist, you Congregationalist, you Episcopalian, you Catholic, and all the other denominations, will be united spiritually. Christian brothers, I would not take away one inch from the depth of your baptistery. I'd just as lief you stay a Baptist until the end of time, and only ask that the Lord make you see that others who differ from you are lovers of Christ working in a different way, and that God is love. — After-dinner Speech, Baptist Union. If there were such a thing as a silent oath ; if there were such a thing as dry swearing ; if a man swore under his handkerchief, — there would be less to be repre. bended. — Lectures to Young Men : Profane Swearing 98 BEECIIER AS A HUMORIST. When a young physiologist came with great zeal to Cuvier, and said that he had discovered a new muscle in the frog, the old naturalist waved him off kindly, and said, " Come to me again in ten years." He never came. Further investigation proved to him that he had not found a new muscle. — Sermon : Reason in Religion. How many men do we find, who, when they go into old age, and retire from active business, are exactly like a man who has carried witli him all his days a knife with a hundred blades, but has only opened one, and that the big blade ! — Lectuues to Young Men : Happiness. Any thing is wise and useful that shall keep our thoughts quietly busy with outward things. Thoughts that strike in ai-e full of mischief. They gnaw at our heart. They breed sorrow and sickness. Man is the highest study of man, doubtless ; but each one had better study some other man. — Star Papers : A Heart in Little Things. A MAN who plants lettuce may plant it to-day, may to-morrow see that it has sprouted, and may in two or three days eat it. But it is only lettuce. A man who plants acorns does not run out the next morning to see what they have done. — Sermon : Patience. WHO PAYS. — IDEAS. — SINGING. 99 Good men, you know, pay all the taxes of bad men. Virtuous men pay the state bills of dissipated men. Patriotic men pay all the war bills of unpatriotic men. Citizens that stay at home pay the expenses of politicians that go racketing about the country, and do nothing but mischief. — Sermon: The Strong to Bear with the Weak. When a physician has a little practice, he goes on foot ; when he has a little more, he buys a horse ; when he has still more, he buys two horses ; but when he has a large practice, he must have three horses ; and when he has an excessively large practice, he gets four, five, six, or eight horses. And the larger the number of horses that he has in his stable, the less he is obliged to ride each one. And so it is with ideas. If a man has but very few ideas, he rides one : if he has more, he rides two. And the larger his stable is, the more ideas he has. And the consequence is, he rides each one only a pi'opor- tional part of the time. — Sermon : The Right and the Wrong Way of Giving Pleasure. We are commanded to sing with understanding ; and yet, if we did, four hundred and ninety-five out of five hundred pieces of music that are published for singing would have to go to the dirt. — Sermon : The Right and the Wrong Way of Giving Pleasure. 100 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. A CREED is a good thing to teach a congregation by, and to catechise claildren by. It is good to lay down general points of belief around which a congregation may gather. But a creed is not a whip of scorpions by whicli we are to lash each other's backs. — Sekmon : The Apostolic Theory of Preaching. Did you ever know a person to fall in love with another philosopliically? Is not philosophy the last thing that has to do with it ? Do not men fall in love by the heart, if at all ? They never fall in love head-first, but always heart-first, if the love is good for any thing. — Sermon : The Way of Coming to Christ. There ai-e those that are instructed in the necessity of cross-bearing, who, that they may not be without a cross, make up little crosses, and are caref ui that they are made not only small, but of light timber. Their crosses are the hermit's shell, like the old pilgrim's scallop which was worn on the shoulder. — Sermon : Bearing, but not Overborne. You might as well try to dissolve a slate roof by allow- ing the rain to fall on it, as to attempt to affect some people through the motive of fear. — Sermon : Social Obstacles to Religion. HOSPITALS. — GETTING SHARP. — SYMPATHY. 101 A MAN says, " I am full of diseases from head to foot ; and as soon as I get cured of them, I am going into a hospital." What are you going into a hospital for when you are cured ? The Church is a hospital where men may be cured. The Church is a bulwark tliat hides men from the stroke of battle. The Church is a schoolhouse. It is a father's house or a brother's house. — Sekmon : Weak Hours. Any man's grindstone is good enough to grind you on: any man's shop is good enough to make you in. — Sekmon : The Perfect Manhood. I DO not blame you so severely, because you have been so badly brought up. You have been studying cate- chisms and creeds so that you have had no time to study conduct. You have been so busy thinking about church machinery that you have not had much time to think about Christian spirit and life. You have studied the body until you have forgotten that there is such a thing as the soul. — Sekmon : Christian Sympathy. There is but one place where a man can bear a boil, and that is on his neighbor ! — Sekmon : Bearinf/, but not Overborne. 102 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. There are many men who are far better than their reputations. There are many men who have the reputa- tion of being stingy and cruel, and who will wring your neck in a strife or an emergency, but who, at another time, and when they are in a different vein, would sit by you night and day, and would not spare their bodies nor their wealth in ministering to you. They would kill you on one side, and save you on the other. — Sermon : The Hidden Life. Have you never seen ants swarm over the rosy flower- buds of the opening peony ? How they caress it I How nimble are their thousand tickling feet as round and round the circular buds they go uursingly ! Is it that ants love flowers ? No ! It is that they may lick up the sugary secretion which exudes from the flower-bud. And so there may be many that serve men, not because they love them, but because they fain would suck their sub- stance out of them. — Sermon : The Right and the Wrong Way of Giving Pleasure. The most worthless of all persons are those IDy-handed boys who have been brought up without being taught to do any thing for themselves. We know this is so, and recognize it in social matters; but it is precisely Avhat many churches attempt to do by men. — Sermon: In Christian Life. SCULPINS. — STOICISM. — DEATH. 103 There is a fish called sculpin. Nine-tenths of it are mouth, and one-tenth body, as I recollect it when a boy. Its chief business, apparently, consists in eating every "ng. And after it has eaten, nothing comes of it. It ,s a big tail to propel itself with, a big head, a big lOuth, and a very active stomach with which it does the vork of digestion quickly. It is a do-nothing, gorman- fiizing fish. And there are sculpin men. — Sekmon : iRemnants. Jt used to be a matter of pride in school for us boys to f^ake punishment bravely. When I had thrown paper- balLs, and missed the master (to my great regret), and I Tas called up, and, holding out my hand, I took the strokes of the rattan, twenty, twenty-five, thii'ty of them, and took them without flinching, like an Indian, did I not know that all the boys behind me were watching, and saying, " Bravo I there's a hero for you "? and did I not go back to my seat triumphing in my iniquity ? — Sermon : Other Men's Failings. There is something that touches the imagination of people in the thought of a minister's dropping down dead in the pulpit ; but I do not think I should be any nearer heaven if I died in my pulpit, than if I died on my farm, or on a railroad-car, or on a vessel at sea. — Sermon : In Christian Life. BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. I LIKE culture so long as it is humble, so long as it I'^gards itself as the servant of the truth. But I love the heart; and I would rather hear an old cracked voice, feeble, with many gaps, singing honestly with tears t] songs of Zion, than hear the finest cantatrice that evt. enraptured the most cultivated congregation. — Sekmon The Social Principle. Men must set their watch at the time that the enemj. is accustomed to come. Indians usually make their atta^j^ at three or four o'clock in the morning, when men sl.:lg soundest ; and that is the time to watch against ludir j-^g There is no use in doing it at ten o'clock iu the mon^jj^. — Sermon : Wutchfulness. Here is a man that says, " I guard myself against stinginess." Bless his dear soul! he never had a feeling of stinginess in all his life. His trouble has always been looseness. He never could keep any thing. — Sekmon : The Nature and Sources of Temptation. A MAN may put yeast into a measure of meal, but God never puts religion into a man. Religion is nothing but the way in which men think, plan, act, and continue to act. — Sermon : In Christian Life. BROAD CnURCn. — NATURAL GIFTS. 105 An Episcopalian ? Yes, I am. I am a Presbyterian too ; and I am a Methodist, and a Baptist, and a Sweden- borgian. I am every thing that has any good in it. — Sermon : Contentment in All Things. A MAN, •who, having no disposition to talk, and no temptation to talk, manages his tongue, is the man who shakes his head at careless people, and is proud to say that he has taken good care of his tongue, and does not often sin in that way. God made your tongue heavy, and that is the reason that it does not wag. It is not because you have a special virtue, but because you avail yourself of a natural peculiarity. And you pride your- self upon that. — Sermon : Watchfulness. There are men who own a thousand acres of land, — in their soul, — and have but a quarter of an acre of it under cultivation. — Sermon: Tlie Hidden Life. Show me a saint that is truly a saint, and I will show you a saint that is gently, cheerfullj^, mildly, sweetly a saint. In other words, as fruit is very sour when it is green, so are Christians ; and as fruit when it ripens is sweet, so are Christians. — Sermon : The Peace of God. 106 BEECnER AS A HUMORIST. In the Western country, where they tole game, they build enclosures for wild-turkeys, and strew grain under the rails, along a deep trench dug for the purpose ; and the turkeys, with their heads down, pick up tlie grain, and, without suspecting their danger, go into the trap that is set for them. It is the nature of a turkey, when he is caught, to carry his head high. He never will stoop except when he is feeding. Being in the enclosure, as he will not lower his head, and as he cannot rise on the wing unless he has running-ground, he cannot escape. That is just the way young men are caught. They go along feeding, feeding, feeding, carrying their head low, and creeping into the enclosure ; and then, being proud, and carrying their head high, they cannot escape, and are destroyed. "There is a way which seeraeth right to a man ; but the end thereof are the ways of death." — Sermon : Forelookings. To conscience so perverted, how sweet are the passages of Scripture like " Contend earnestly for the faith that once was delivered to the saints." If there is any fight- ing to be done. Conscience is there, and wants to have a hand in it. Conscience has persecuted and turmoiled the world. "Without it the world is but a den of beasts ; and with it perverted, scarcely any better. — Sermon : A Slmbj of Meekness. SOUL-POVERTY. — EMOTION. — THE ROMANS. 107 You cannot make true happiness and leave the soul out. An ox isn't happy because he has a grand prairie to feed on. He only can enjoy that which he has, mouthful by mouthful, right down under his feet. No reasoning for him, no poetry for him, uo music for him, no meditation on the stars for him. A mouthful and a good swallow are all that he knows any thing about for the time being. — Sermon : Outward Prosperity and Inward Poverty. The true test in religion is not how impressionable one is. I put an iEolian harp in my window. The evening breeze, having nothing to do, and finding the harp in the window, courts it, and an interchange of sweet sounds goes on. I take a crowbar and put that in the window. The same wind sweeps over it, but it does not sing. Why did the harp sing? For no reason except that its nature was impressionable. It put forth no volition. There was no merit in what it did. Why did not the crowbar sing? Because it was a crowbar. — Sermon: Fact and Fancy. He does not like to play for money; but the company that he is in do it, and he waives his objections. He acts on the principle that Among Romans, one must do as the Romans do — a maxim which only needs a little extension to make it read, Among devils, one must do as the devils do ! — Sermon: Forelookings. 108 BEECH ER AS A HUMORIST. I HAVE been taught a good deal that meditation is a Christian excellence — and so it is; but meditation is largely a running of the mind-mill ; and certainly it does not do any good to run the mill when there is no grist in it; and yet, thousands " meditate " when they have noth- ing to meditate on. Indeed, the great majority of men are unable to supply themselves with food for continuous reflection. — Sermon : Fact and Fancy. Surely, it is a great deal to avoid wrong-doing ; but what would you account that husbandry to be worth which succeeded only in keeping down weeds? A man goes on ploughing and ploughing, harrowing and harrow- ing, hoeing and hoeing ; and he rejoices, as July comes on, saying, " There is not a weed on my farm — not a weed." Round and round he goes, looking into every corner, and under every hedge, to spy out any weeds that may have been left; and he says, " Not one weed shall grow on this farm." But where is thy corn, O farmer? " I have no corn." Where is thy wheat ? "I have no wheat." AMiere are thy fruits ? "I have no fruits." What liast thou ? No weeds ! — Sermon : All-sidedness in Christian Life. "Rejoice in the Lord alway." I will defy anybody to do it, if he were such a God as was taught me when I was a boy. — Sermon : Christianity in Practice. EFFECTIVENESS.— SENTIMENT. 109 Abstract principles are like rivers in the wilderness, flowing night and day with power, but turning no mill. They come from the sea, they fall on the mountain, they run down through their channels back to the sea. Round and round they go in this perpetual circuit, doing nothing until civilization stops the water, and pours it over the wheel, and says, " Work for your living." Then these forces begin to be productive. — Sermon : How goes the Battle ? It has been said that everybody in the world is either a Platonist or an Aristotelian — Tlato standing for ideal philosophy, and Aristotle for the real and practical. Everybody tends, it is said, to follow one or the other. No: the perfect man unites them both, and is at once Aristotelian and Platonist. His feet standing on solid facts, his head goes philosophizing, and his heart is the balance between them. — Sermon; Fact and Fancy. It is said by religious technicalists of our day that this preaching religion as a power rather than as a doctrine is a sentimental philanthropy instead of a Gospel. What was it, then, that the angels sang when they announced the coming of Christ ? " Peace on earth, gooil will to men." The old theologue turns round, and says, " Go back to heaven, you sentimental singers 1 " — Sermon : How goes the Battle f 110 BEECUER AS A HUMORIST. Men look back and say, " Ha, ha ! you pretend to be the descendants of apes and monkeys." I care not; whatever may be found out either by probability or certainty in the past, forgetting the things that lie behind, I press forward toward the prize of my high calling in Christ Jesus. I am not, at my stage, either a monkey or an ape, whatever my ancestors far back may have' been. I do not care if they swung their tails in the woods, or hung by the branches. That does not concern me. I am far on the march beyond that, on toward God, and have symptoms of God in me, and the hope of eternal life through the all-conquering power of divine love. "Whatever may have been the origin of the human race, that is the destiny ; and those who by faith and patience go on unfolding shall bear the precious fruit in heaven. — SeumOX : Tlie Highest Things. The holders of this theory declare that, by reason of Adam's fall, men lost all communion with God, not only, but all power of righteousness. It is said that they are free to choose, but they were paralyzed so they could not choose righteousness : they were not paralyzed so that they could not choose wickedness. It is a queer account of choice ; as if upon the summit of a glacier a child on his sled starts with power to go down, but no power to slop going down. Gi'eat choice, that ! — Sermon : Adam and Christ. SLANDER. — A DYING DOCTRINE. — FAULTS. Ill Am I persecuted by evil men's tongues? Let them wag. The serpents vibrate their tongues m the wilder- ness, but they do not trouble any one who is not in the wilderness. Stand aloof from all these misconceptions of men. Stand higher. — Sermon : The FruUs of Palience, I SUPPOSE to-day, from my own observation and judg- ment, that this scheme of the fail of man and transmis- sion of Adam's sin to his posterity — the lost condition of the human family, and the atonement made with reference to facts that never happened — I suppose that this is more in doubt in the intelligent and average ministerial mind to-day, than it ever was since the days of Augustine. Ani while a great many men think that it is their duty, somehow or other, to preach it, they preach it with such definitions and with such limitations, that when they have taken off all the fins and all the scales and all the interior and the head, there's not nmch left of the old doctrine at all, — though they call it by the old names. — Sekmon : Adam and Christ. We cannot, of course, treat all faults just alike. That is to say; some need surgery, some need merely medicine, some need simply watchfulness. Some faults are like dust upon garments; a little brushing relieves us of them. — Serjion ; Mulml Judgmenls. 112 BEECnER AS A HUMORIST. Meekness is not simply improvolcableness ; for then they that had the stupidest brains would be the most meek. . . . And it is very easy for a man to be patient when he is not hurt, and can't be hurt, because there is no nerve struck. The white-faced men that go through life as if they were enamelled, are not meek, by any means. Meekness is gentleness and kindness when men are subject to great provocation. It is the capacity and the fact of turning voluntarily the full tide of compassion and of benevolence upon men that are doing things infinitely provoking. Nobody wants to strike back when he is not struck : but when a man is struck a full blow, all the appropriate muscles tingle to return it again ; aud to be able to say, " Peace, be still," — not only that, but to be able to control the rising desire for revenge, and to replace eveiy feeling of that kind with those of gentleness and sweetness and real affection, — that is meekness. (It needs the more explanation, because you are less acquainted with that than with almost any other grace.) — Sermon : A Study of Meekness. God is forever producing difference. INIen, stupidly, are forever striving to rub it out. God never allows any thing to go through two generations just alike; and we are coopering up the work of God, or trying to do it, and to restore a certain sort of lost unity or identity. — Sermon : Concord, not Unison. JUDGMENT — HUMAN AND DIVINE. 113 Taking human nature at large, a great many persons say, " Wliy, I trusted him because he was a church mem- ber." Ah! it does not do to attribute too many practi- cal virtues to church members. Because a man lives in a fine house, it does not follow that the fellow is fine himself. — Sermon : Mutual Judgments. Look at the whole walk of Christ among men, — not judging any man by the standard of absolute perfection; looking at men with sympathy as to what they were, as to the conditions of life in which they found themselves, as to the mistakes they had been led into, as to the op- pressions and wrongs done to them. See how he took by the hand of sympathy the poor, famished widow, as the old rich fellows were rolling their gold and silver down the copper vase that received it, so that they saw it go in, and heard it rattle all the way down. The only thing that seemed to arrest the eye of Christ was this poor little shrivelled, shrunk, and shivering widow that came, and had with her two mites. He could not see them, they were so small. They made a farthing. There was not a tinkle; but he heard it I He called his disciples to him, and said, " She has given moi'e than they all : they have given of their abundance ; she of her penury has given her whole living." He is to be the judge of you and of me. — Sermon : Practicable Ideals. 114 BEECnER AS A HUMORIST. It is related in one of the Western States, that a dis- tinguished governor, who dressed very plainly, being expected in a large town, went in such homely guise that the landlord of the hotel, thinking him to be nobody but a sturdy farmer, and anticipating the arrival of the gov- ernor and his retinue, packed him off away up in an attic-room, and then waited for the governor to come. Now, as he went up into his little room, he must have enjoyed it immensely. I should have done so, at any rate, — tlie discrepancy between the treatment accorded and that which the man was expected to give me, think- ing I was a farmer, when I was the leading statesman and politician in the whole State, and I seeing all the arrangements made for the governor, and knowing I was the man. Ah! it is a great thing to have the sense of humor. To go through life without it, to have no sense of the humorous and ridiculous, is like being in a wagon without springs. — Serjion : The Fruits of Patience. I SAY it is a sign of great hope that this vast enginery and exterior machinery, partly state and partly church, which has borne authority by which to oppress and domi- nate men, is toppling to its downfall. Do you call this the decay of religious institutions throughout the world? Decay! It is God's plough ripping i;p old pasture-sod, and getting ready to sow the seeds of righteousness. — Sermon : How goes the Battle? TOBACCO. — THEOLOGY AND INSPIRATION. 115 A YOUNG man of a clea'i mouth, imsmeared by sour beer or intoxicating drinks, and unsnioked by tobacco, feels uneasy till he can get the nasty smell on him, in his hair, through and through his skin, and his whole compo- sition. Then he begins to think he is a gentleman. — Sermon: Forelooklngs. If one has made himself even superficially acquainted with the systems of theology which have prevailed in the Christian Church, and has seen chapter after chaj^)- ter, discrimination after discrimination, statement after statement, running very nearly through the whole com- pass of time, and entering widely and deeply into the eternal verities, he will be struck, by contrast, with the exceeding modesty and i-eserve of the Sacred Scriptures. The litterateurs and inspired men of the Bible did not know half so much as their interpreters think then do ; and the questions that are issued, debated, settled, regi- mented, and systematized in the great theologies that have prevailed from age to age, are almost unknown to Sacred Scripture. — Sermon : Agnostic Faith. The Bible is in many churches where men idolize and praise it, like an idol in the temple. One would think that it is a living thing. A man would not accidentally sit down on the Bible without jumping up as if he had sat on a wasp. — Sermon: Agnostic Faith. 116 BEECH ER AS A HUMORIST. A MAN cannot understand any mental process except so far as he has had experimental participation in it. For instance, I never think in music. Beethoven never thought out of it. If I attempt to whistle a new tune, it is alwaj^s made up of scraps of old ones : it is a hash (and so I observe it is with most tune- writers). — Sermon : Man's Two Natures. Speaking of the office of ministers, he said that Christ went about setting men right, making them whole. " That is our business," said he : " we are man-vie^nlers." At one of the annual pew-lettings in Plymouth Church, one of his church members said to him, " ]\Ir. Beecher, we hope you will preach a good, sound gospel next year, because some things you have said lately did not sound very orthodox to us New-Englanders." With tranquil composure he replied, " Well, as for you, brother, you are very sure to hear as much gospel as you will live up to." At the close of another pew-renting, one of the mem- bers said to him, " Mr. Beecher, I've been trying all the evening to get a seat, and haven't succeeded." To which Mr. Beecher replied, " Well, then, you nmst fulfil the apostolic injunction, — 'having done all, to stand.'" — Abbott's Life of Beecher. LONGER EXTRACTS. SCHOOL REMINISCENCES. It was our misfortune in boyhood to go to a District School. In winter we were squeezed into the recess of the fartiiest corner, among little boys, who seemed to be sent to school merely to fill up the chinks between the bigger boys. Certainly, we were never sent for any such absurd purpose as an education. We were read and spelled twice a day unless something happened to prevent, which did happen about every other day. For the rest of the time we were busy keeping still. And a time we had of it ! Our shoes always would be scraping on the floor, or knocking the shins of urchins who were also being " edu- cated." All of our little legs together (poor, tii'ed, ner- vous, restless legs, with nothing to do) would fill up the corner with such a noise, that every ten or fifteen minutes the master would bring down his two-foot hickory ferule on the desk with a clap tliat sent shivers through our hearts to think how that would have felt if it had fallen somewhere else j and then, with a look that swept us all 117 118 BEECTIER AS A HUMORIST. into litter extremity of stillness, he would cry, " Silence ! in that corner 1 " Stillness would last for a few minutes, but little boys' memories are not capacious. Moreover, some of the boys had great gifts of mischief, and some of inirthfulness, and some had both together. The conse- quence was, that just when we were the most afraid to laugh, we saw the most comicpJ things to laugh at. Temptations which we could have vanquished with a smile out in the free air, were irresistible in our little corner where a laugh and a stinging slap were very apt to woo each other. So we would hold on and fill up; and others would hold on and fill up too ; till, by and by, the weakest would let go a mere whiffet of a laugh, and then, down went all the precautions, and one went off, and another and another, touching off the others like a pack of fire- crackers ! It was in vain to deny it. But, as the process of snapping our heads and pulling our ears went on with primitive sobriety, we each in turn, with tearful eyes and blubbering lips, declared " we didn't mean to," and that was true ; and that " we wouldn't do so any more," and that was a fib, however unintentional ; for we never failed to do just so again, andtliat about once an hour all daylong. . . . Oh, dear ! can there be any thing worse for a lively, mercurial, mirthful, active little boy, than going to a winter district-school ? Yes. Going to a summer district-school ! There is no comj^arison. The last is the Miltonic depth below the deepest depth. ... — Star Papers. EGGS. 119 EGGS. Now, it sometimes happened, that when busy about the "chores," — foddering the horse, throwing down hay- to the cows (yet requiring a supplemental lock at night to eke out the day's pasturage), — we discovered a nest brimming full of hidden eggs. The hat was the bonded warehouse, of course. But sometimes it was a cap not of suitable capacity. Then the pocket came into play, and chiefly the skirt-pockets. Of course, we intended to transfer them immediately after getting into the house; for eggs are as dangerous in the pocket, though for dif- ferent reasons, as powder would be in a forgeman's pocket. And so, having finished the evening's work, and put the pin into the stable-door, we sauntered toward the house, behind which, and right over Chestnut Hill, the broad moon stood showering all the east with silver twilight ! All earthly cares and treasures were forgot in the dreamy pleasure ; and at length entering the house, — supper already delayed for us, — we drew up the chair, and peacefully sunk into it, with a suppressed and indescribable crunch and liquid ci'ackle underneath tis, which brought us up again in the liveliest manner, and with outcries which seemed made up of all the hen's cackles of all the eggs which were now holding carnival in our pockets! Facilis descensus Averni, sect revocare gradum, etc., which means it is easy to put eggs into your pocket, but how to get them out again, that's the ques- 120 BE EC HER AS A HUMORIST. tion. And it was the question ! Such a hand-dripping business, — such a scene when the slightly angry mother and the disgusted maid turned the pockets inside out I We were very penitent ! It should never happen again ! And it did not — for a month or two. — Eyes and Ears. DEACON MARBLE. How they ever made a deacon out of Jerry IMarble I never could imagine ! Ilis was the kindest heart that ever bubbled and ran over. He was elastic, tough, in- cessantly active, and a prodigious worker. He seemed never to tire ; but after the longest day's toil, he sprang up the moment he had done with work, as if he were a fine steel spring. A few hours' sleep sufficed him, and he saw the morning stars the year round. His weazened face was leather color, but forever dimpling and chan- ging to keep some sort of congruity between itself and his eyes, that winked and blinked, and spilt over with merry good-nature. He always seemed afflicted when obliged to be sober. He had been known to laugh in meeting on several occasions, although lie ran his face behind his handkerchief and coughed, as if thai was the matter ; yet nobody believed it. Once, in a hot summer day, he saw Deacon Trowbridge, a sober and fat man, of great so- briety, gradually ascending from the bodily state into that spiritual condition called sleep. He was blameless DEACON MARBLE. 121 of the act. He had struggled against the temptation with the whole virtue of a deacou. He had eaten two or three heads of fennel in vain, and a piece of orange-peel. He had stirred himself up. and fixed his eyes on the minister with intense firmness, only to have them grow gradually narrower and milder. If he held his head up firmly, it would with a sudden lapse fall away over back- ward. If he leaned it a little forward, it would drop suddenly into his bosom. At each nod, recovering him- self, he would nod again, with his eyes wide open, to impress upon the boys that he did it on purpose both times. . . . Happy man who does not sleep in church I Deacon Trowbridge was not that man. Deacou Marble was ! Deacon Marble witnessed the conflict we have sketched above ; and when good Mr. Trowbridge gave his next lurch, recovered himself with a snort, and then drew out a red handkerchief, and blew his nose with a loud imita- tion, as if to let the boys know that he had not been asleep, poor Deacon Marble was brought to a sore strait. But I have reason to think that he would have weathered the stress if it had not been for a sweet-faced little boy in the front of the gallery. The lad had been innocently watching the same scene, and at its climax laughed out loud, with a frank and musical explosion, and then sud- denly disappeared backward into his mother's lap. That laugh was just too much, and Deacon Marble could no more help laughing than could Deacou Trowbridge help 122 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. sleeping. Nor could he conceal it. Though he coughed, and put up his handkerchief, and hemmed — it was a laugh, Deacon ! — and every boy in the house knew it, and liked you better for it — so inexperienced were they I — Norwood. MANNERS. Will any man tell me why I am forbidden by what is called " good manners " to pour my tea into a saucer, and cool it there? Much reproach has been heaped upon " strong " tea and coffee, which properly belongs to hot tea and coffee. Every one knows how much the efficient action of chemical agents is intensified by heat. Scald- ing tea is far worse than strong tea; but to be both scalding and strong, is an attack upon the human body which no man ought to venture who has any regard for health. But etiquette forbids me to cool my coffee in any other manner than by waiting. Coffee-cups, in houses where the secret of making good coffee is known, should be like the human heart, large and deep; and in such cases the beverage will, like true affection, cool very slowly. Hence, one who does not wish to wait till the meal is over before drinking coffee, must either cool it in his saucer, or drink it hot, or wait and drink it after break- fast, and all because of the absurd notion that it is not good manners to pour coffee into your saucer. Even more will be shocked when I avow myself as an MANNERS. 123 advocate for the rights of the knife. Now, custom has reduced it to the mere function of cutting up one's food. That done, it is laid down, and a fork serves every other purpose. By practice, one gains unexpected dexterity in using a fork for purposes to which it is ill adapted. The Chinese, in like manner, make awkward chop-sticks rarely sei-viceable, by practice little short of legerdemain ; but is that a good reason for the use of chop sticks ? A fork, as now made, is unfitted to pierce any morsel upon its tines, and yet they are sharp enough to afBict the tongue if carelessly used. They are split so as to be useless for liquids, and yet they are used as if they were spoons. The fork compels the manipulator to poke and push and pile up the food-material, which tends to fall back and apart: it is iiiade to pursue the dainty tidbits, in which often the very core of flavor resides, around the plate in a hopeless chase ; and at length a bit of bread is called in as an auxiliary, and thus, while the slim-legged fork, in one hand, is chasing a slim liquid mouthful, a wad of bread in the other goes mopping and sopping around to form a corner, and between the two is at length accom- plished what is called genteel feeding I Meanwhile, a broad knife is fitted for the very function which the fork refuses, and the wad of bread ill performs. The reasons for refusing the knife as an active feeding- implement are worthy of the awkward practice. "It is liable to cut the mouth " no more than a fork is to stick into lip or tongue. 124 BE EC HER AS A HUMORIST. If men ate with razors, there would be some reason for avoidance. But table-knives are blunt-edged. It is even difficult to make them cut when one tries ; and if they are properly used, the back of the blade will be turned to the mouth. We do not object to the fork, but we demand a restoration of the knife from banishment. We do not desire to enforce its use, but such a liberation as shall leave each one free to use the knife for conveying food to the mouth when that is most convenient, and the fork when that is preferred. Equal rights we demand for black and white, for home-born or innnigrant, for lich and poor, for men and women, and for knives and forks. — News- paper Letter. BOOK-KEEPING. Somebody has sent to me a very nice book on book- keeping. And no book could have been more timely. There is no other point on which 1 have a more lively interest than that of keeping books. In fact, I have found it very difficult to get them, and still more difficult to keep them. There seems to be no conscience formed as to book-theft. . . . Pencils, umbrellas, canes, and books are not property. They cannot be appropriated by one nma as owner. They belong to the category in which is included air, light, water, and fire : who wants them may have them. I will not say that this is yet the written law. It is the common law. BOOK-KEEriNG. 125 Books ? The only bodies are they for noble spirits that have no ailments or annoyances. Books talk to you, not through the ear, but another way. They shout their silent meaning at the soul through the eye. They never importune, and are never reluctant. They are always full witliout eating. They are still, but never sleep. They grow old without infirmity. They are neither sick nor weary. They outwatch the watcher, and greet the morning, and wait for the stars at evening. For every other guest we make a couch, and spread a table. But strange are the manners of books and pictures, that bring rest to our perturbations, and are guests that perform all the offices of hospitality for the host. Why should they be singled out for theft? . . . How many first volumes are gone? What is a widowed volume ? Oh that they would take the set if they will take any! The surprise of their "taking off " comes to you, too, at unexpecting moments. You are discussing with a friend of some matter: there is illustration or proof in Kugler's Handbook. You run for it, and then first learn that it is gone! That gem from Didot's press, — all that you know of it is, it was here, it is not hei-e, and it never will be here That last clause is the result of long experience. If a book is poor, it is not worth the trouble of returning; if good, it is too valuable to be returned. . • . You will now understand how delighted I was to per- ceive that this subject was attracting attention, and that 126 BEECnER AS A HUMORIST. treatises were written upon it. " Book-keeping " — for schools, too, it says. That's beginning at the right place. I have not read the book yet ; but any attempt to rectify this great evil of books that cannot be kept must do good. . . . I shall read it soon. No doubt, it will be another ex- cellent moral aid to weak consciences. The work that will teach me Book-keeping, will do what nothing has done before. I cannot keep money. I cannot keep books. Blessed is he that shall teach me how ! — Eyes and Ears. THE PARSON'S HORSE. The horse was the parson's favorite. He literally had no faults. He was never known to kick, or to bite any thing but food. Hay constituting his principal food, a larger quantity was required than would have been if oats or corn had furnished more concentrated nourish- ment in smaller bulk. Nature, ever kind to her crea- tures, gradually enlarged the barrel of the horse, until his belly was puffed out far beyond any requirements of beauty. A large, mild, and sleepy eye revealed but half the quietness of his disposition. His legs might be handled by boys. You might sit down safely between his hind-legs. There was no liberty which j'ou could not take, except that of fast driving. You might pour a bushel of potatoes suddenly upon his haunches without THE PARSON'S HORSE. 127 producing excitement — not, however, because he was lifeless, but from mere self-possession ; for a peck of oats (a luxury seldom ventured 1 at the other extremity quickly showed there was life in him. He was safe. "Slow and sure" was his maxim. When the good parson was once seated in the chaise, the events were as follows : when the self-possessed animal, with his head and neck declining a little below the line of his back, felt the reins in the Doctor's hands, he opened ttis eyes ; and having been standing on his three legs, the fourth crooked up, and resting on the edge of the hoof, he brought them all squarely under him, as if saying, "I am all here, sir." Next the Doctor pulled both reins, and they were pulled. Then he lapped them both upon the back, with a gentle slap, and pulled one of them with some decision. The time had come. The horse started, walked into the road, and then, after several admonitions, fell into an easy jog, which satisfied the parson's ambition. But no persuasion could carry that trot up the slightest rise in the ground. It was this habit of stopping early in ascending, and starting again late in descending hills, that secured to this matchless horse long life and immunity from strains. Dr. Buell innocently told Hiram Beers that he never used a bottle of liniment in his life. Hiram waited till the parson was out of hearing, and then discoursed : — " Wal. I'd bet on that ! Bottle of liniment ! I should 128 BEECBER AS A HUMORIST. as soon think of liniment on a hoe-handle or a gun- stock ! That horse thinks it's always Sunday, and that he's goin' to a funeral all the while. I'd give anybody five dollars to git three miles an hour out of that critter ! If there was two of 'em, they wouldn't go a mile an hour ; and four such horses — good gracious! it would take a yoke of oxen to start 'em anyhow 1 " — Norwood. STUPID RELIGIONISTS. " Henby "Ward Beecher says, ' The only way to extermi- nate the Canada thistle is to plant it for a crop, and propose to make money out of it. Then worms will gnaw it, bugs will bite it, beetles will bore it, aphides will suck it, birds will peck it, heat will scorch it, rains will drown it, and mildew and blight will cover it I ' " And now guess, if you can, what harm lies couched in these words. Put on your spectacles, and let our critic express himself. The Italics are his, not mine. " These bugs, beetles, aphides, heat, rain, and mildew are the messengers of God. If they are sent, they are on an errand for God. Now, if the above extract has a point, it is that when mankind plant a crop of any kind of grain or seed, God takes a malicious pleasure in defeating such schemes," This is exquisite ! If mildew attacks my grape-vines, it is on an errand for God ; and if I sprinkle them with STUPID RELlGIONISTFi. 129 sulphur as a remedy, I put brimstone into the very face of God's messenger ! When it rains, — is not rain, too, God's messenger? — does "Puritan" dare to open a blasphemous umbrella, and push it up iu the very face of this divine messenger? When a child is attacked by one of " God's messengers," — measles, canker-rash, dysentery, scai'let-fever, — would it be a very great sin to send for a doctor on purpose that lie might resist these divine messengers ? There are insects which attack men, against one of which we set up combs, and against another sulphur. " Nay," says Puritan. " If they are sent, they are on an errand for God." " Puritan " goes on : — "Such a sentiment is far deeper in its tone than a mere murmtir. EsiJecially as Mr. Beecher's farm at Fishkill is ■well known to le cultivated with reference to making money." Yes, we confess it. A " murmur " very imperfectly expresses our feelings as we dig at a Canada thistle, or squirt whale-oil soapsuds over a myriad of " Puritan's '' divine messengers, called aphides. A grumble would not be too strong a word to use on such occasions. Nay, the reverend gentleman has been known to say, in a paroxysm of horticultural impiety, " I wish every rose-bug on the place was dead ! " which must seem to " Puritan " a piece of horrible depravity. 1 did not before know that I had a farm in Fishkill. 130 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. My experience with the farm at Peekskill, "which is well known to be cultivated with reference to making money," is such, that, if it be true that I own another farm at Fishkill, I shall consider myself on the straight road to the poorhouse ! But there is more coming : — " The charge of the reverend gentleman amounts to this, — that whenever he attempts to raise a crop of wheat, corn, flax, or grass, God sends beetles, hugs, aphides, heat, rain, and mildew, to blast his designs. " This has the ring of Cain when his sacrifice was rejected. That primeval sinner A^euted his anger towards God on his holy brother. Mr. H. W. Beecher vents his anger towards the real cause of his mildewed crops, by charging the inno- cent instruments in their Maker's hand. If this is not blasphemy in one as well informed as Mr. Beecher is, we have read his words amiss. " Puritan." I may have been mistaken, but it has seemed to me that every crop that I have ever attempted to raise has had swarms of " messengers " sent upon it. But, mitil now, I never suspected that God sent them, in any other sense than that in which he sends diseases, famines, tyrants, literary " Puritans," and all other evils which afflict humanity. But what is to be done about this matter ? If it be *' blasphemy " to sjieak against bugs, it can be little STUPID RELIGIONISTS. 131 short of sacrilege to smash them. Here have I been, in the blindness of unrepented depravity, slaughtering millions of " the messengers of God " called aphides ! I have ruthlessly slahi those other angelic " messengers " called mosquitoes, who came singing to me with mis- placed confidence. I have even railed at fleas, and spoken irreverently of gnats. I have gone farther: on a sultry summer's day, after dinner, I have turned out of my room every one of those " messengers of God " which wicked boys call flies — every one but one, I mean , and just as the sounds grew faint, and sight dim, and I was sinking into that entrancing exi)erience, the first virgin moments of slumber, an affectionate fly settled on my nose, ran down to kiss my lips, and, like a traveller on a new continent, set about explor- ing my whole face. Instead of greeting this " mes- senger " divine as " Puritan " would, I confess to a lively vexation. Aim! if speaking of flies in a very disrespectful manner is blasphemous, I must confess to the charge ! But soberly, is it not pitiable to have among us men pretending to intelligence, who bring religion into discredit by such hopeless stupidity ? In the velocipede-rinks, besides those for speed, premiums are offered to the men who can ride the slowest. " Puritan '' should enter himself. If anybody can go slower, he must be a marvel of torpidity. — Star Papers. 132 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. FAMILY GOVERNMENT. "William! stop that noise, I say! — won't you stop? Stop, I tell you, or I'll slap your mouth ! " William bawls a little louder. " William, I tell you ! ain't you going to stop ? Stoj), I say! If you don't stop, I'll whip you, sure." William goes up a fifth, and beats time with his heels. " I never saw such a child ! — he's got temper enough for a whole town : I'm sure he didn't get it from me. Why don't you be still ? Whist ! Wh-i-st ! Come, come, be still, won't you ? Stop, stop, stop, I say ! Don't you see this — don't you see this stick ? See here now " (cuts the air with the stick). William, more furious, kicks very manfully at his mother — grows redder in the face, lets out the last note, and begins to reel and shake and twist in a most spiteful manner. " Come, William ! come, dear — that's a darling — naughty William! come, that's a good boy; donty cry, p-o-o-r little fellow; sant ab-o-o-s-e you, sail eh! Ma's 'ittle man, want a piece of sooger? Ma's little boy got cramp, p-o-o-r little sick boy," etc., etc. WiUia.m wipes up, and minds, and eats his sugar, and stops. After Scene. — The minister is present, and very nice talk is going on upon the necessity of governing children. " Too true," says mamma, " some people will PERFUMERY. 133 give up to their children, and it ruins them — every child should be governed. But then, it won't do to carry it too far: if one whips all the time, it will break a child's spirit. One ought to mix kindness and firmness together in managing children." " I think so," said the preacher; " firmness first, and then kindness." "Yes, sir, that's my practice exactly." — Fruits, Flow- ers, and Farming. PERFUMERY. Your worship is almost destroyed in church. One smell is before you, another behind you. The odors of sanctity ai-e manifold abominations. If you repair to the concert-room, the air is polluted and waiting for you. Good manners forbid a gentleman to hold his nose while talking with a lady drenched with cologne or lavender. One may almost recognize his friends, as dogs do game, by their peculiar odor. Every one affects a peculiar smell. We might almost name persons by their favorite odor. Miss Vanilla smiles yonder; next her the charming Miss Orris-root. There are several of the Lemon Ver- bena family present, and yet more of tlie Lemon family. Then, there are the Bergamots, the Orange-blossoms, the Bitter Almonds, and other old and respectable families. Once in a while comes a lady of transcendent good taste, wholly inodorous. She does uotcan*y a saudal woodfau. 134 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. She wears nothing kept in a camphor-wood trunk. Her silks have neither been hung in a cedar closet, nor smoked with French pastilles. Her gloves smell of kid leather — as they ought to. No myrrh, no incense, no nuts, blossoms, fruits, seeds, or leaves, have been crushed to yield for her any odor of offence. She is pure as water, and as inodorous ; as bright as a pearl, and as scentless; witching as a opal, and as devoid of perfume. Oh that she might live a thousand years, and be the an- cestress of ten thousand just like her ! — Eyes and Ears. SAILING. . . . What is more innocent than sailing, unless it be rowing ? No cruelty is enacted : no muscles are over- strained. And what sight upon earth is more exceeding- ly beautiful than a fleet of snowy yachts, blown like sea- gulls across the swelling water ? Of course you will own a boat, even if you do not join the club. You will often choose to see how your bit of ground looks from a liquid stand-point. You will often cool your summer afternoons by the breezes off shore, and seek the ocean air long befoi'e it bears its coolness in upon the land. It is a A'ery noble thing to see the sun go down upon a golden sea, whose tremulous swells and fretting crests flash the glory from wave to wave, and, breaking up the broad sheet of red light into myriads of sparkles and fiery circles, play with it, tossing it up and down, hither and A NEW-ENGLAND SUNDAY. 135 thither, as if it were a liquid floating on the sea. Do you know how to manage a boat ? to row, to scull, to set sail, to reef or take in sail ? Pray be careful ! Do not carry too much sail. I have long been of opinion that men and ships in our day carry to3 much top-hamper. While the vKnd is gentle, you may spread everything: but these crank hulls and enormous sails are very tempting to ca- pricious squalls ; and some day, as you sit with your hand on the tiller, dreaming out a sermon, under which your good people will perhaps dream too, down will come a sudden swoop, and with one rattle and plunge you will be all overboard 1 Never go out without a life preserver under your arms. It is awkward, to be sure, to sit trussed up with these inflated air-ruffles under one's arms ; but it will be yet more awkward to flounder about in the water without them, especially if you cannot swim. . . . — Eyes and Ears. A NEW-ENGLAND SUNDAY. But Rose, having reached the mature age of twelve, was now manifesting her power over" the Westminster Shorter Catechism ; and as it was simply an achievement of memory, and not of the understanding, she had the book at great advantage, and soon subdued every ques- tion and answer in it. . . . " What do those words mean, Rose ? " "Which words. Pa?" "Adoption, sauctification, and justification?'* 136 BEECH ER AS A HUMORIST. Rose hesitated, and looked at her mother for rescue. *' Doctor, why do you trouble the child ? Of course she don't know yet all the meaiiiug. But that will come to her when she grows older." *' You make a nest of her memory, then, and put words there, like eggs, for future hatching ? " • " Yes ; that is it exactly : birds do not hatch their eggs the minute they lay them. They wait." "Laying eggs at twelve to be hatched at twenty is subjecting them to some risk, is it not ? " " It might be so with eggs, but not with catechism. That will keep without spoiling a hundred years ! " "• Because it is so dry ? " " Because it is so good. But do, dear husband, go away, and not put notions iu the children's heads. It's hard enough already to get them through their tasks. Here's poor Arthur who has been two Sundays on one question, and has not got it yet." Arthur, aforesaid, was sharp and bright in any thing addressed to his reason, but he had no verbal memory; and he was therefore wading painfully through the cate- chism, like a man in a deep, muddy road, with this dif- ference, — that the man carries too much clay with him, vhile nothing stuck to poor Arthur. . . . " What is God, Arthur?" said his mother. " God is — is a — God is — and God — God is a " — Having got safely so far, the mother suggests ' Spirit? " at which he gasps eagerly, " God is a sjjirit." WASPS. 137 " Infinite," says the mother. "Infinite,'' says Arthur. And then blushing and twisting in his chair, he seemed unable to extract any thing more. " Eternal," says the mother. " Eternal," says the boy. " Well, go on : God is a spirit, infinite, eternal ; — what else ? " "God is a spirit, eternal, infinite, — what else? " " Xonsense ! " says the startled mother. " Nonsense," goes on the boy, supposing it to be a part of the regular answer. *' Arthur, stop ! what work j'ou are making ! " To stop was the very exercise in Catechism at which he was most proficient; and he stopped so fully and firmly that nothing more could be got out of him or into him during the exercise. — Norwood. WASPS. The wasp is always well dressed, and always ready for company. A nimble ci'eature, exquisite in every partic- ular, — trig, polished, burnished, elegant in form, — what single thing can be alleged against him except that little stiletto which he carries in a terminal sheath ? Yet he is not to be blamed. He did not put it there. All that in reason can be required is, that he use his cou- 138 BEECUER AS A HUMORIST. cealed weapons in a manner conformable to justice and good morals. . . . Now, for a gentleman at leisure walking up and down, soliloquizing good will to all creation, it is a very awkward thing to have a wasp creeping up be- tween his boot and pantaloon, and he be ignorant of the fact I The poor insect is unconscious of any impropriety. He has no suspicion of the scenes which you will soon enact. It is not until he has ascended above your knee that some motion constraining the cloth presses him close to your warm flesh. The contact is a terror to him. It may be the bosom of a devouring enemy! Like a hero, he will die fighting. He tln-usts out his sword in a manner that dispels every poetic dream, and brings you to the realities of life with such a clutch at the spot as no man can give except one who has once had a wasp between raiment and body. You have got him ! To do it you have taken a large grasp, that he may be encom- passed with tliicknesses of cloth impervious to the longest sting. Eut the act and attitude are not favorable to grace. You rush toward the house or barn careless of pace or dignity, and eager only for deliverance.' Now, unless one has been drilled, it is difficult to disrobe while you are bent half double, and with only a left hand at liberty for use and an enemy in the rear. As the cautious work goes on, some luckless fold loosens, and the enemy is at you again, this time in good earnest. WASPS. 139 Strange that so small an instrument can put a brave man into such ecstatic haste ! But there is many a man who could firmly face a cannon, who could not stand for a moment with a wasp under his garment. The fact is, you do not know where he is — or will be. He may be in your hand, or he may be just in the act of lancing you, here or there or anywhere. And the expec- tation is dreadful. We know that it is. An enemy in the dark is always powerful through fear. I consider one wasp under the dress as more terrible than nine hundred and ninety-nine in a fair fight in the open field ! Bad as this scene is to a proud nature with delicate susceptibilities, there is a disgrace even worse ; for within a few days, and while your flesh creeps with the remembrance, you are walking your garden with a few friends, picking flowers for one and another in turn, and nourishing the hours with genial converse, when in the very middle of a sentence you seize yourself with a des- perate clutch, and without word or bow you race and hobble toward the house again. You have but one single comfort, — that you are not stung yet. With utter expedition, you come down to the root of the diffi- culty, and find that thei-e was no wasp at all, only a leaf tickling your skin ! In fact, you are angi-y now to think there was no wasp. If one must go through the fear, the march, the fumble, the search, he ought at least to be rewarded with a wasp ! — Eyes and Ears. 140 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. MOSQUITOES. The day has been too hot. The night is sultry. You are nervous and I'estless. No place so good as the bed ; and to the chamber you repair, hoping soon to lose all remembrance of your cares and troubles in sleep. The light is extinguished, and you resign yourself to the pleasing sensations of approaching rest. When lo ! a thin, piercing sound salutes you ! It needs no interpre- tation. It is a mosquito come a-serenading. Is there any trumpet that can wake a nervous man more quickly or more entirely? Every sense is attent. Now the sound comes near, now recedes, now it is lost. It soon comes again ; and, watching your opportunity, you give yourself a broad slap upon the face, hoping that the mosquito shared it with you I For a moment he seems dead. You experience a minute satisfaction of petty revenge. But soon the inevitable sound comes again, but with a hither and thither motion. You are acutely attentive. This time, to make sure, your hand is disengaged, and lies outside of the coverlet, ready for a surprising blow. He alights. You feel his delicate touch upon your fore- head. Quicker than winking, your hand follows him with such a slap as makes the room echo. But he is quicker than you are, and, besides, sees in darkness much better. . . . After all, perhaps tliat last slap did the business for him. It certainly did for you. . . . A BOY AGAIN. 141 All this would not be worth telling, but for its appli- cation. I see on every hand nieu engaged in beating themselves on account of fears, cares, frets, and petty annoyances. . . . Love has its mosquitoes. How many sounds does jeal- ousy hear ! How many dreads does anxious love breed ! How many nameless fears, and how many " what ifs ! " Much of the anxiety of business is mere mosquito-hunt- ing. Wlien I see a man pale and anxious, not for what has happened, but for what may happen, I say, " Strike your own face, do it again, and keep doing it, for there is nothing else to hit ! " — Eyes and Ears. A BOY AGAIN. O FOR a boy's apj^etite ! We needed no morning bell. Hunger used to awaken us betimes. We plunged into our clothes, and darted for the kitchen, where stood Rachel, black as night, with a loaf of bread white as milk. She cut a slice an inch thick, smooth as a line had measured it. It needed neither sauce nor butter. It was a mere morsel, sent before, to hold the citadel until breakfast could come to the rescue ! So it was every day, and during all our growing years. Then, there were the apple-eating exploits. If there were not boys yet alive somewhere, doing the same thing, it would not do to tell the quantity of apples daily 142 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. consumed. Indeed, it seems to our memory that we were always eating apx^les — after they began to get ripe. With what a rush did we two youngsters go to the " Early Bough " tree, to see what liad fallen during the night ! Blessings on the rain that softened the stem, and on the wind that loves boys, and plumps down through the night the ripe apples for them ! Then the cows were to be driven to pasture, and the apple-trees on the road paid tribute. What did the farmers put their trees along the fence for, if they did not want boys to get the fruit? Then, before returning, we had to look in the sweet-flag swamp, to see if the graters (as we called the spadix, or blossom-spike) were ripe. These, too, were devoured. If a few berries came in our way, they followed the apples. A bunch of sorrel- leaves furnished acid. Should a wild honeysuckle ap- pear in our travels, bearing swamp-apples, — by which term boys designate the watery and tasteless swellings on azalea bushes, — we went at them as voraciously as if we had not had a mouthful to eat tliat day. These entremets did not prejudice us against a slice or two of bread in the middle of the forenoon ; and if an errand took us over to Aunt Bull's, there was sure to be — O those doughnuts ! By such timely auxiliaries our famishing stomach held out till twelve-o'clock dinner, and again with like treatment till supper; and after that, if late in the season, or in winter, came a hatful of apples, brought up from the cellar (a boy's hat is the one uni- A WESTERN TRIP. 143 versal measure, liquid or solid) ; and without more ado, three, four, or five apples apiece wound up the day, and sent us to bed. Now, we hoiiestly declare that, in all our boyhood, we do not remember a single day of indi- gestion, except on one or two " training-days," when we ate stuff not lawful to utter. But day after day, for years, we ate till eathig could no further go, without a thought of inconvenience, so well did the mill grind its grist 1 . . . — Star Papers. A WESTERN TRIP. Is there any thing on earth so much to be pitied as a trunk ? What awful violence it suffers in packing ! what crowding and straining, to get in twice as much as it can possibly hold ! Then comes the shutting, the getting on the lid, the jumping and jamming, the red-faced vexa- tion because the latch will not quite catch, the final triumph, the twirl of the key, the strapping and cover- fastening. How trying to weak human nature is a strap and buckle ! You pull till the blood threatens to burst from j'our head, and almost bring the hole up to the buckle-tongue. You give it a quick jerk to let it in, but it only springs back. You try again, and lose it again, and your patience with it. You jerk, and protest, and will have it come right. At length you propose a com- promise, and cut another hole in the strap half way, and / ./ 144 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. deceive yourself with thinking that you have had your own way. This may end your troubles, but it is but the beginning of the trunk's. The hacknian drops it : the porter slings it aboard. The baggage-master fires it into the heap, as if he meant to make it strike fire. At night it is to be changed at Dunkirk, say. They are pitched out of the car like bombs. Two or three employees seem possessed with very spite at them. They catch them by the handle, give them a prodigious twirl on one end, and the trunk spins like a top to a corner of the baggage-space, and smashes up against its fellows. Again, at Cleveland, they are sent out like shot from the cars, piled up on the trucks, little ones at the bottom, and big ones at the top, some are smashed, some are dented, some are ripped, but all go headlong and heterogeneously into the new limbo of baggage. It is very interesting, then, to examine some of these trunks, which a kind aunt has labelled, " Please lift it by the handles ; " or, " Keep this side up." One might as well put a label on a Paixhan shot, giving directions for its careful journey. ... — Eyes and Ears. FAMILY PRAYERS. When men begin their praj^ers with, " O thou omnip- otent, omniscient, omnipresent, all-seeing, ever-living, blessed Potentate, LorJ God Jehovah ! " I should think A PLEA FOR THE BOYS. 145 they would take breath. Think of a man in his family, hurried for his breakfast, praying in such a strain ! lie has a note coming due, and it is going to be paid to-day, and he feels buoyant; and he goes down on his knees like a cricket on the hearth, and piles uj) these majesti- cally moving phrases about God. Then lie goes on to say that he is a sinner : he is proud to say that he is a. sinner. Then he asks for his daily bread. He has it ; and he can always ask for it when he has it. Then he jumps up, and goes over to the city. He comes back at night, and goes through a similar wordy form of "evening prayers ;" and he is called " a praying man ! " A praying man ? I might as well call myself an ornithologist be- cause I eat a chicken once in a while for my dinner. — Sermon : Prayer. A PLEA FOR THE BOYS. "I DO believe that the very spirit of mischief is in that boy I From morning to night, it is out of one thing into another. There is nothing safe when he's about." Why don't you whip him ? " "Whip him ! There is hardly a day goes over his head that he's not punished, besides the gi-and totals that are paid off by his father about once a fortnight." Is he ugly? Do you think he means to do wrong? "That's the worst of it. He has as kind a heart as need be, and is always so sorry. But it does no good. 146 BEECIIER AS A HUMORIST. The minute my back is turned, he is tying up the two cats, or putting chairs before the door to see tliem tum- ble over when some one opens it, or pouncing out of a corner suddenly upon Sally, whose screams seem to de- light him. Yesterday he got the scissors, and began to cut his own hair. A perfect fright he made of himself. He tied Aunt Prue's dress to the back of her rocking- chair the other day, so that when she got up, the chair got up too. Only a week ago he put a wick into his father's bottle of bear's grease, and set it on fire ; and yesterday he must needs collect all the tooth-powder he could find in the house, and mix it in a tumbler with lampoil, to paint the bureau withl Oh, dear! I am never at rest a minute with him, except when he is out- doors at play. There is somebody scolding down-stairs, or crying out up-stairs; and when there is silence, I know that some peculiar mischief is hatching I've talked and talked to him, but there is no use in it. He is sorry, and will not do so again ; and that seems to act like an absolution, and he is ready with a cheerful heart for the next scrape. Oh, if Robert were only half as good as Mr. Goodkin's James! If I ever live to see him grow ■up, I hope that I shall have some comfort in the boy; for Heaven knows 1 have very little now ! " Now, we take the boy's side. We know just how he feels. Never scold children, but soberly and quietly reprove. Do not employ shame except in extreme cases. The CLOTHES. 147 suffering is acute ; it hurts self-respect in the cliiltl, to reprove it before tlie family ; to ridicule it, to tread down its feelings ruthlessly, is to wake in its bosom malignant passion. A child is defenceless: he is not allowed to argue. He is often tried, condemned, and executed in a second. He finds himself of little use; he is put to things he don't care for, and withheld from things that he does like ; he is made the convenience of grown-up people ; is hardly supposed to have any rights, except in a corner, as it were ; is sent hither and thither ; is made to get up or sit down for everybody's convenience but his own; is snubbed and catechised, until he learns to dodge government, and elude authority, and then be whipped for being " such a lying whelp that no one can believe him." Well, well! girls may have the hardest time of it in after-life, but for the first fifteen years boys are the sufferers. — Star Papers. CLOTHES. Are not clothes an evidence of sin, and a penalty there- for ? When one considers the care, labor, mental trouble, and various degrees of discipline, connected with clothing, it seems strange that it should not have been arranged for men as for birds and animals. What a large part of human industry is employed in the manufacture of fab- 148 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. rics ! how great the number of persons who spend their lives in cutting, fitting, sewing, and otherwise preparing, dress ! Then, too, the time which every one of us must consume in thinljing of dress, selecting and arranging ; and the daily consumption of time in robing and disrob- ing 1 All this care and expense are spared to birds and beasts. It is said that they toil not, neither do they spin I So neither do they weave, cut, or sew ! They have no buttons to put on, or grumble about when they come off. There are my ducks : they have the most compact dress- ing-case ever invented. Do they wish to eat, — the bill is employed ; do they wish to carve and cut their food, — the bill is case-knife or carving-knife, and fork to boot I Do they wish to dress cloth, — the bill is better than tear sels are I Would they brush their coat and pantaloons, — behold ! the bill is brush too. Would they prepare them- selves with a mackintosh, or india-rubber garment, against water and weather, — the bill goes to work, and, from a little private arrangement of tlieir own, extracts the wet- repelling oil, and lays it on evenly all over their coat. \^'ould they brush their hair, polish their boots, — again comes this facile instrument-of-all-work, the bill, and dusts tlie one, and rubs down the other. Then, with in- imitable simplicity, this important member turns to the dinner, and becomes, indeed, a bill of fare and food. How much would human life be simplified by some such arrangement I There, too, is my friend the bobolink ! He steps off CLOTHES. 149 his perch in the morning, finds a wash-basin in the dew on a head of clover, and makes his toilet with flowers for a looking-glass. He sings a while, brushes his hair, sings again, takes a bite of breakfast, and eats, sings, and brushes, without fastidious suggestions of a ridiculous propriety. My cows, too, have a very economical method of arran- ging their wardrobe. It is a wonderful convenience to have your clothes grow on you. In fact, a cow is prepar- ing a coat and vest in the mere act of eating ! Since hair and skin are formed from secretions, and these are sup- plied to the blood by digestion of food, the stomach turns out to be a great cloth-manufactory. And while a cow, lying down at evening under a tree, seems the very pic- ture of quiet, chewing her cud with half-shut eyes, she is, in fact, busy at dress-making ! Only man is doomed to spend a large portion of his time in providing the materials and making preparation for his clothes. How odd it would seem to see a robin pull off its feather coat at night, and prepare for retiring ! How much stranger still, if respectable men had their clothes formed upon them ! and vests, pantaloons, coats, secreted from their food I It a button flew off, lo, a button germ would at once begin to swell and grow ! if a seam ripped, or some unlucky contact tore a hole, the parts would throw out new matter for repairs, and bridge over the gulf. Alas ! it is vain to repine or speculate upon the probable convenience of a dif!!erent arrangement. Here 150 BE EC HER AS A HUMORIST. we are, just as we are ! And sheep and flax and cotton must give us staple ; we must dye, spin, and weave ; meas- ure and cut, fit and sew, put on and wear out, cast off and renew, to the end of the world. ... — Eijes and Ears. GOING TO SCHOOL. ... A GOOD village primary school ought to be a cross between a nursery and a play-room ; and the teacher ought to be playmate, nurse, and mother, all combined. One teacher we had, young, pale, large-eyed, sweet of voice, but not prone to speak, — bless her ! — why must she have consumption, and one day disapj^ear? And the next day, behold, in her place, a tall, sharp, nervous, energetic, conscientious spinster, whose conscience took to the rod as a very means of grace I The first one would have made us love and obey her. We were even begin- ning. From the second we were marvellously delivered. " Mother, I don't want to go to school." "You don't wish to grow uj) a dunce, do you, Henry?" " Yes, marm." " What ? Grow up like a poor, ignorant child, go out to service, and live without knowing any thing ? " " Yes, marm." " Well, suppose you begin now. I'll put an apron on you, and you shall stay at home and do housework. How would you like that '; " SLEEPING ON THE CARS. 151 « Oh, do, Ma ! " Sure enough, we were permitted to stay away from school, provided we would "do housework;" and all summer long our hands set the table, washed dishes, swept up crumbs, dusted chairs, scoured knives ; our feet ran of errands, besides the usual complement of chores in the barn. ... — Star Papers, SLEEPING ON THE CARSA ... In the cars, stretching one's self out for balmy sleep, means, curling one's self up like a cat in a corner. Short limbs are a luxury when a man sleeps by the square inch. First, you lie down by the right side, against the window, till a stitch in your side, worming its way through your uneasy dream, like an awl, leads you to reverse your position. As you lean on the inside end of your seat, the conductor knocks your hat off, or uses your head as a support to his steps as he sways along the rocking pas- sage. At length, with a gToan which expresses the very feeling of every bone and muscle and individual organ in your body, you try to sit upright, and to sleep erect. But erect sleep is perilous, even when it is i30ssible. You nod and pitch, you collapse and condense, and finally settle down in a promiscuous heap, wishing that you 1 From an account of a Weatern lecturing-tiip, before the era of eleep- Ing-cars. 152 BE EC HER AS A HUMORIST. were a squirrel or a kitten, and curiously remembering dogs that could convolute on a mat, and birds that could tuck their head under their wings, and draw their feet and legs up under their feathers. O that I were round, like a marble, and could be rid of protruding members I But such slumberous philosophy and somnolent yearn- ings for circular shapes die out as you sink again into a lethargy, until the scream of the whistle, the grinding of the brakes, the concussions and jerks, arouse you to the fact that you are stopping to wood and water. . . . Look for a moment at the grotesque appearance of a car full of sleeping and sleepless wretches. What per- suasion could induce that pompous little man, bald- headed, round-faced, and rubicund, to put himself into such a ludicrous attitude if he were awake ? His feet sprawled forth, his body half sunk sideways, his head lolling back, his mouth wide open like a cannon ! His good dame by his side looks like a bag of clothes, thrown loosely into a corner till the next morning. There sits a sandy-haired man, thin-visaged, keen-eyed, as still as if he were asleep, but as wide awake and perpendicular as if he were a lighthouse. By contrast everybod}^ looks ten times sleepier than before, after you have looked at him. At length the long nightmare wears itself out. Color begins to come into the cheeks of the morning. The air smells fresher. Birds are seen, and might be heard, if the huge Bird of Speed that whirls you along were not so noisy. — Staii Papeks : The Wanderings of a Star. CLIMBING. 153 CLIMBING. Shall I climb this ailanthus-tree to get a stick ? I would in a minute if it were only in the country. That's another objection to a city life. Nobody is surprised ia the country to see a man up a tree. But in a city, a gen- tlemanly person making his way up into a tree would have a motley crowd around him in a jiffy. And no wonder, come to think of it ! The act of climbing is one of adroitness rather than of gracefulness. First, a jump and a good hug with the arms. Then, drawing up the legs, the knees clasp each side of the tree, the feet touch- ing each other at a point that would be intersected by a line drawn through the spine and extended. You are in posture. You resemble a frog drawn together for a spring, and set up endways. Next, you straighten up, and raise your arms a ring higher. Then holding fast by them, like an inch- worm, you bring on the other half After two or three jerks, you will begin to put one leg around the tree, so that the calf shall clasp the back side, and the shin scrape itself on the other. And as you go up, so do the legs of your pantaloons, which, at ten feet, are corrugated around your knees in a manner that will give your skin and the bark of the tree a fair chance to see which is toughest. And about this time it is a curious fact that most men begin to quirl their tongue out of the corners of their mouths, as if that were a great help to them. Now, I decline doing all this in a city, with police- 154 BEECnER AS A HUMORIST. men musing whether I am to be arrested for insanity, and my neighbors laughing, and boys cheering me, and sun- dry unsavory jests broken on me, — not even for a slick •will I so expose myself. — Erjes and Ears. NUTTING: ITS JOYS AND DISASTERS. " I'll tell ye what," said Deacon Marble, quite in the spirit of a boy, "I'll stump you, Trowbridge, to try it. I'll give you that big tree with low branches, and I'll take that slim one — and beat you." They soon pulled off their coats, and assailed their respective trees. Good Deacon Trowbridge, when his phlegmatic natm-e was thoroughly aroused, was a man of great strength. He took a hug at the tree such as a bear might have given ; and, at first, it seemed as if he were going to succeed. But each hoist grew slower; and, though cheered by Hiram, it was doubtful if he could reach the limb just above his head. If each jerk upward had carried his body up as fast as it did the leg of his pantaloons, he would soon have mounted the coveted branch. At length he got hold of it, but no more could he do. It was too high for him to let go and jump ; and as to getting any higher, it was out of the question. The poor man seemed in a wof ul plight ; but Hiram, equal to every emergency, had procured a rail, and, planting it under his foot, eased him dowu safely to the ground. NUTTING. 155 ]\Ieaiiwhile, Deacon INIarble, slim and nervous, had gone up his way like a squirrel. Already he was seeking out the topmost boughs, and rattling down the chestnuts in a perfect shower. The shouts of merriment soon di'ew many to this rather unusual scene, and, among others, the deacons' wives. Sirs. Trowbridge gave way to unrestrained laughter. She was a natural laugher. She laughed with her mouth, her ey«s, her whole face, with her voice and all her body. It was no silvery trickle, but a gener- ous tide that set in strongly, filled every indentation along the sliore, and plashed up in spray all the more, if any obstacle sought to stay it. " Well, Trowbridge," — and then, like a child with the whooping-cough, she gave way to a paroxysm of laughter, — "I should as soon" — and again she was swept away from her remark, like one carried out from shore by a refluent wave — "I should as soon expect'' — the words were drowned in a laugh — " to see " ..." to see ' . . . "abut — " at which she fairly seemed to dissolve, and could no longer hold herself up, " a butter tub climb a tree ! " Far other were the emotions which filled the soul of Polly Marble when she beheld the scene. A fire blazed behind her spectacles. Though she was infirm in limb, the weakness had in no respect reached her head, every inembei of which was active. At first she seemed unable to utter her amazement. At length she gained relief : — 156 BE EC HER AS A HUMORIST. "Deacon Marble, j'ou d better come down! An old man like you a courtin' death in the top of them trees ought to be ashamed of himself! It ain't decent.'' Then, turning to those around her, she expressed her- self thus : — " Wal, Hiram, I dew hope you're satisfied at last. You're always huntin' after mischief, and now you've got it. To think oft! One deacon a pufRn' and red on the ground, and the other up in the tree-top ! No, it's no laughin' matter ! It's a sin and a shame, and I'm sur- prised that anybody should laugh at such levity and folly," giving poor Mrs. Trowbridge a look of reproof, that ought to have sobered her, but which, in fact, served to renew her agony of laughing, for she palpitated, and held on to her sides, and gasped, " Oh, I shall die — with • — laughing — dew stop ! " Turning to her husband, Mrs. Marble began expostu- lating with him. "Deacon Mai'ble, if you have any respect for me, or for yourself, — and I don't think you have a speck, — you'll come down ! Everybody's laughin' at you. You're a sight to behold! It's a wicked thing, and agin' natur', for an old man like you to think he's a boy, and caper about in the trees. If the Lord had meant you to-be a squirrel, he'd a made you so ! " " Don't, Polly, don't. I'm comin' down. Just look here : I want to tell you somethin' I " Incautious Polly ! Will you never learn the deceitful- MID-OCTOBER DAYS. 157 ness of that husband of yours ? She ventures under the tree to hear what he has to say, just as he gives a rousing- shake to the branch on which he was lying. Down came the chestnuts, and down came the chestnutbuiTsI Tliey rattled on her bonnet, they pattered on her shoulders, and one burr — a frivolous burr, given to levity — struck her new spectacles, and knocked them quite out of symmetry. The nimble deacon was soon on the ground, and would fain have left the impression on his spouse that it was merely the act of getting off the limb to come down that brought upon her the chestnuts. Hiram was in ecstasy. " Isn't the deacon cute? Oh, what a politician he'd a made, if he'd only kept out of the church, and away from religion 1 " — Norwood. MID-OCTOBER DAYS. Our old Shanghai steps up with a pert " How do-ye- do-sir? " cocking his eye one-sidedly at j'ou, and uttering certain nondescript guttural sounds He walks off croon- ing to himself and his dames. It is all still again. There are no flies now to buzz in the air There is not wind enough to quiver a hanging straw, or to pipe a leaf-dance along the fence. You fall into some sweet fancy that inhabits silence, when all at once, with a tremendous vociferation, out flies a hen from over your head, with au 158 BEECIIER AS A HUMORIST. outi'ageous noise, clattering away as if you had been throwing stones at her, or abusing her beyond endurance. The old Shanghai takes up the case, and the whole mob of hens join the outcry. The whole neighborhood is raised, and distant roosters from far-olf farms echo the shrill complaints. Aa egg is all very well in its wa}', but we never could see any justification for such vocifer- ous cackling. Every hen in the crowd is as much excited as if she had performed the deed herself. And the cock informs the whole region round about that there never was so smart a crowd of hens as he leads. Nothing seems so aimless and simple as a hen. She usually goes about in a vague and straggling manner, articulating to herself cacophonous remarks upon various topics. The greatest event in a hen's life is compound, being made up of an egg and a cackle. Then only she shows enthusiasm when she descends from the nesi of duty, and proclaims her achievement. If you chase her, she runs cackling • if you pelt her with stones, she streams through the air cackling all abroad, till the impulse has run out, when she subsides quietly into a silly, gadding hen. Now and then an eccentric hen may be found stepping quite beyond the limits of hen-pro- priety. One such has persisted in laying her daily egg in the house. She would steal noiselessly in at the opeu door, walk up-stairs, and leave a plump egg upon the children's bed. The next day she would honor the sofa. On one occasion she selected my writing-table, and, DOORS. 159 scratching my papers about, left her card, that I might not blame the children or servants for scattering my manuscripts. Her persistent determination was amus- ing. One sabbath morning we drove her out of the second-story window, then again from the front hall. In a few moments she was heard behind the house; and, on looking out the window, she was just disappearing into the bed-room window on the ground-floor! Word was given ; but, befoi'e any one could reach the place, she had bolted out of the window with victorious cackle, and her white, warm egg lay upon the lounge. I pro- posed to open the pantry-window, set the egg dish within her reach, and let her put them up herself ; but those in authority would not permit such a deviation from pro- priety. Such a breed of hens could never be popular with the boys. It would spoil that glorious sport of hunting hens' nests. ... — Star Papers. DOORS. The hall of a dwelling gives you the first impressions. Sometimes on entering, you fear that by some mistake you have got into a clothes-closet ; at others, you enter upon a space so small that it is only by a dexterous interchange of civilities between yourself and the door that you can get in or the door be shut. In some halls, so called, a man sees a pair of corkscrew stairs coming 160 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. right down upon him, and fears lest by sorae jugglery he be seized and extracted like a cork into some upper space Often the doors are so arranged that what with the shutting of the outside door, and the opening of inside ones, the timid stranger stands a chance of being impaled on the latch, or flapped front and rear ; for vigorous springs attaclied to the doors work with such nimbleness that one needs to be expert, or, having opened the door, before he can dash through, it will spring back on him with a " Now-I've-got-you " air quite alarming. Such houses seldom remit their torments here. There is an exquisite symmetry in all the interior adaptations. You finish your visit, and rise to depart, taking the door most likely to let you out, and find yourself walking into a sweetmeat closet 1 A young beau, having acquitted himself well of the last critical sentences, and executed a half backward and wholly awkward march toward the door, with ineffable satisfaction, opens and steps into the china-closet! The little girls giggle ; the little boys laugh out ; the young ladies are confused, and the beau still more so. But, what if it had been the cellar-door? On one occasion, visiting a thrifty friend whose dining-room and sitting- room were one, I came near descending headlong into his cellar, which, for convenience probably, opened into the dining-room. I once saw three like and equal doors in a sitting-room. The one was the true door of MODERN CONVENIENCES. 161 departure ; the next, the cellar ; and the third, a bed- room. There was only one chance in three for a stran- ger. — Norwood. MODERN CONVENIENCES. There are many persons who suppose that people who live in first-class houses, with all the modern improvements, must, of course, be much puffed up, and that they become quite grand in their own eyes. . . . Let a little preliminary exultation of a new man in a new place be forgiven, ye who are now established I Remember your own household fervor on first setting up, while we recount our economic ]oj, and anticipations of modern conveniences that would take away all human care, and speed life upon a down-hill path, where it was to be easier to move than to stand still i Every thing was admirable ! The attic had within it a tank so large as better to be called a reservoir, Down from it ran the serviceable pipes to every part of the dwelling. Each chamber had its invisible water-maid in the wall, ready to spring the floods upon you by the mere turn of your hand • then the bath-room, with tub, douche, shower, and, indeed, various and universal squirt, — up, down, and promiscuous. The kitchen, too, — the tubs with water waiting to leap into them ; the long cylinder by the side of the fire, as if the range had its baby wrapped up, and set perpendicular in the corner to nurse. But 162 BEECH ER AS A UU MORI ST. greatest of all admirations was the furnace ! This, too, was interframed with the attic-tank ; for it was a hot- water furnace. For a time this was our peculiar pride. The water flowed down into a system of coiled tubes, which were connected witli the boiler surrounding the fuinace-fire. The idea was, when the water got as hot as it could well bear, that it should frisk out of one end of the boiler into the pipes, and round through the whole system, and come back into the other end cooled off. Thus a complete arterial system was established, — the boiler being the heart, the water the blood, the pipes at the hot end the arteries, and the return-pipes at the cool end the veins, — the whole enclosed in a brick chamber, from which the air warmed by this liquid heat was given off to the dwelling. It was a day of great glory when we thought the chill in the air required a fire in the furnace. Tlie fact was that we wanted to play with our pet, and were half vexed with the old conservative thermometer, that would not come down, and admit that it was cold enough for a fire. However, we do not recollect ever afterwards to have been so eager. In the first place, we never could raise enough heat to change the air in the house more than from cold to chill. We piled in the coal, and watched the thermometer; ran down for coal again, and ran back to watch the ther- mometer. We brought home coal, exchanged glances over the bill with the consulting partner, and made silent estimates of the expenses of the whole wintei', if this MODERN CONVENIENCES. 163 were but the beginning. But there was the old red dragon in the cellar devouring coal remorselessly, with his long iron tail folded and coiled in the furnace-cham- ber without heat. Tlius, for a series of weeks, we fired off the furnace in the cellar at the thermometer in the parlor, and never hit. But we did accomplish other things. Once the fire was driven so hard that steam began to form and rumble and blow off, very innocently ; but the girls did not know that, and took to their heels for fear of being blown up. When the cause was discovered, the remedy was not easy ; for the furnace bottom was immovable, and the fire could not be let down. But our Joan of Ai-c assailed the enemy in his own camp, and threw a bucket of water into the fire. This produced several effects : it put out the fire ; it also put out so much gas, steam, and ashes, that the maiden was quite put out also. And more than ail, it cracked the boiler. But this we did not know till some time afterwards. There were a few days of com- parative rest. The weather was cold out of doors and cold within. It was soon reported that one of the pipes was stopped up in the chamber, for the water would not flow. The plumber was sent for. He was already well acquainted with the way of the house. He brought upon himself a laugh of ridicule, by suggesting that the water had given out in the tank. Water given out? We turned inwardly pale behind the outward red of laugh- ing. We thought we had a pocket ocean up-stairs: up 164 BEECIIER AS A HUMORIST. we marched, and peered down into the dirty bottom of an emptied tank. Alas! the whole house was symmetrically connected. Everything depended upon this tank, — the furnace in the cellar, the range in the kitchen, the laun- dry department : all the washing apparatus of the cham- bers ; the convenient china-closet sink, where things were to be washed without going down-stairs ; the entry-closets, and almost evex-y thing else, except the door-bell, — were made to go by water ; and now the universal motive- power was gone ! A new .system of conveniences was now developed. Wo stationed an Irish engine at the force-pump to throw up water into the tank from the street-cistern. Blessings be on that cistern in the street ! No man knew how deep that was. And .so we limped along for a few days. Meanwhile, the furnace having been examined, the secret of all this trouble was detected. The life-blood of the house had been oozing and flowing away through this furnace. How much would it cost to repair it? More money than a hot-air furnace would cost, and half more than that. So we determined to clear out 'the pet. Alas (again), how we fondled the favorite at first, and how contemptuously we kicked it at last ! . . . But, oh the changing ! It was mid-winter. The mild weather took this chance to go South, and gg^ in its place the niggardliest fellow that ever stood sentinel in Kamtschatka. The cellar was divided from the kitchen in pai"t by this furnace. For two or three weeks they MODERN CONVENIENCES. 165 were chiselling the tubes apart, and getting the rubbish out of the way, — masons, tenders, iron-men, old iron and new iron, tin pipes, carpenters, and new aii"-boxes, girls and dinner, the Irishman wheezing at the pump, — all mixed in such confusion, that language under the tower of Babel was a euphonious literature in compari- son. Sometimes, as we walked out, our good and loving deacons, in a delicate way, would warn us of the danger of being puffed up with the pride of a stylish house ! At length, after nearly six weeks of the coldest weather of the season, the new furnace took charge of the house. Water returned to the attic. The girls no longer dreaded being blown up by the boiler at the range. But the report came up that the sinks were stopped. After investigation, the kitchen floor must be ripped up, the great waste-pipe reached by digging, and laid open. Broken tumblers, plates, and cups stopped up the pipes. Another week for this. . . . There was a grand arrangement of bells at our front- door which seldom failed to make everybody outside mad because they would not ring, or everybody inside mad because they rung so furiously. The contrivance was, that two bells should be rung by one wire, — a com- mon bell in the servant's entry, and a gong in the upper story. The bell-train was so heavy to draw, that it never operated till the man got angry, and pulled with the strength of an ox. But then it went off with such a crash and jingle, that one would think a baud of music 166 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. witli all its cymbals had fallen through the skylight down into the entry. Thus, women, children, and modest men seldom got in, and sturdy beggars had it all their own way. It was quite edifying to see experiments per- formed on that bell. A man would first give a modest pull, and then reflect what he was about to say. No one coming, he gave a longer pull, and returned to wait- ing and meditation. A third pull was the preface to stepping back, surveying the windows, looking into the area, when, seeing signs of unquestionable habitation, he returns with flushed face to the bell ; — now for it ! He pulls as if he held a line by the side of a river with a thirty pound salmon on it ; while all the bells go off, up and down, till the house seemed full of bells. Things are not mended when he finds the gentleman of the house is not at home ! We fear that much grace has been lost at that front-door. In the midst of these luxuries of a first-class house, we sometimes would look wistfully out of the window, tempted to envy the unconscious happiness of our two- story neighbors. They had no conveniences, and were at peace ; while we had all manner of conveniences, that drove us up and down stairs, — now to keep the flood out, and then to bring it in ; now to raise a heat, then to keep off a conflagration ; so that we were but little better off at home than are those innocently insane people, who leave home every summer, and go into the country to take care of twenty trunks for two months. But the A HOUSEKEEPING EXPERIENCE. 167 cruellest thing of all, as we stood at the window, was the pious looks of passers-by, who seemed to say with their eyes, " A man cannot expect much grace that lives in such a fine house." It has certainly been a means of grace to us ! Never such a field for patience, such humbling of expectations and high looks. If it would not seem like trifling with serious subjects, when asked how one might attain to perfection, we should advise him to buy a first-class house with modern improvements, and live in it for a year. If that did not fit him foi" translation, he might well despair" of any chance. — Ears and Eyes. A HOUSEKEEPING EXPERIENCE. Men are naturally either proud or conceited, and some- times both. This appears in many things, but in noth- ing more than in the supercilious airs in which they indulge about housekeeping. Every well-bred woman has had occasion to lament the ignorance in which men live, without shame or self-reproach, of the commonest ele- ments of domestic economy. How often does the skilful wife lecture the discontented husband about the impossi- bility of getting a breakfast in ten minutes, or of always having things up to an imaginary perfection ; or of doing as well on washing-days, or when the cook is sick, or has broken her temperance pledge, or when there has been 168 BE EC HER AS A HUMORIST. an insurrection among the help! Only the constant reminders of the excellent women at the head of the bureau of domestic affairs can keep men from presump- tuous remarks and ignorant complaints. It would be well if men could sometimes be left to do their own work. We have an experience to relate. Our summer vacation was ended; but the family were to remain in the country until the frost opened chestnut- buri's, and nipped the boys' fingers. We concluded to board ourselves for the day or two. It was Saturday. We began to reflect upon the stores to be laid in for Sun- day, and the method of preparing them. We have a little gas stove, invaluable for sickness, for pet suppers, and for returned gentlemen disposed to make their own tea. With it we could boil and bake. To broil was beyond its skill — or, at any rate, beyond our knowledge of its capacity. We rummaged the shops, and alighted upon a gas-broiler, to be described hereafter. We proceeded next to our grocer's, ordered six canta- loupes, as many tomatoes, and bread. On reaching home, it occurred to us that butter was sometimes used with bread, and that had been forgotten. We went back for it, and also procured half a dozen eggs. On reflecting how the eggs were to be eaten, pepper and salt came to mind ; and not a particle of either could we find in the well-cleaned caster. We looked into the store- closet, behind all the bottles, tore a little hole in every paper package, found sage, summer-savory, catnip, empty A HOUSEKEEPING EXPERIENCE. 169 spice-boxes, salt-bags used for corks, and nests of boxes of all sizes, some with a smell of allspice, some with odor of cinnamon, and others fragrant of nutmegs, gin- ger, and cloves; but no salt, — pepper likewise. After wasting time in order to save it, back we go a third time to the grocer for salt and pepper. A few crackers, also, and a few herrings. Next, we reflected upon the proper elements of a soli- tary gentleman's dinner. Souj) was out of the question ; roast, boiled, and fricassee were rejected ; fowls and fish were marked out ; and only porter-house steak and mutton-chop remain. The quantity staggered us a little. But, to err on the side opposite famine, we ordered two beefsteaks and five pounds of mutton-chop. (Let the sequel be noted) As there was nobody in the house to receive them, we raced home to 'tend the door ! We waited a full hour ; and when at length the things came in, our patience had gone out. Next, we found that coffee must be bought, then tea (English breakfast-tea, of coui-se, real Souchong, — the only tea of thorough refinement, green teas being for unlearned drinkers). These we brought home in our own hands. At lengtli our labors of preparation seemed over, and we began to contemplate results, — when it flashed upon us that there was neither milk nor sugar in the house ! These caused another journey. AVe hunted up a kitchen knife and fork ; for every available instru- ment had been carried away, and the silver was all locked 170 BEECnER AB A HUMORIST. up in somebody's safe. Thus, nothing was left for bur- glars, and — nothing for us. In this round of investiga- tion we gained an acquaintance with our own house which forty years of connnon life would not bestow. We found out all about the sideboard, its spoon-drawer, its napkin-drawer, its closet, and that secret drawer on each side, so cunningly ari-anged that no thief would ever suspect its presence until he found it out. We climbed to the top shelves of the store-closet, saw fragments of dishes — various old acquaintances that disappeared long time ago. We got down on our knees to look into lower closets tucked in under suites of drawers, and we mounted up on barrels to j)eer into high nooks ; and in one case, the barrel playing us a mean trick, we came down both sooner and faster than we had intended. But how shall we describe our experiences when all these prejiarations resulted in an actual meal ? A long, flexible tube was brought from the central gas-fixture, and connected with the pet stove. To boil the water for tea or coffee was easy. But we had forgotten just how much tea should be put in for a drawing. And the quan- tity was certainly enough ! We diluted, and diluted, and were prodigal of milk and sugar, without being able to cover the pi'odigious bitterness of the draught. But this was all commonplace compared with our meat- history. The broiler was very much like two iron pot- lids soldered together, with a hollow handle attached. The gas came through the handle into the space between ; A TIOUSEKEErrNG EXPERIENCE. 171 and the lower section being pei-forated with a multitude of gas-holes, when gas was let on, the lower surface was covered with blue jets. The meat being placed on a tin dish, this blazing cover was placed on proper supports just over it, and shot its heat downwards, It is a capital contrivance. The juice and the odor attempting to escape were driven back into the meat ; and in our own case, such was the force of repression, that they were driven out of the plate, and over on to the dining-i'oom carpet (for all our exploits took place there). Just as the meat began to sizzle and splutter, and while we were gazing delightfully at the process, the tube slipped off the handle, the flame went out very suddenly over the meat, but not till the escaping gas from the liberated tube had caught fire, and shot a flame across our hands, that caused us to drop broiler, knife, and every thing else with astonishing celerity. We had no idea before how spry we could be. The evil was soon i-epaired, but only to play off again the same trick, till we held tlie tube on to the broiler with one hand, and manipulated the meat with the other. We salted it, we peppered it, we turned it twice, the first time on to the floor, the next time on to the dish, but with the same side up. The fork was a four-pronger. It could not get hold, or only just so far as was needful to effect a deception and a disaster. At length we put out the gas, took both hands, and trium- phantly reversed the obdurate steak. The bread was baker's. The tea we have spoken of. 172 BEECH ER AS A nUMORIST. Tlie meat was serviceable. We could neither cut it nor chew it. The tomatoes were good. The melons were not. But the whole dinner agreed with our theory of moderation in appetite ; and the satisfaction which we lacked iu eating, we sought to gain by profitable medita- tions. Facilis descensus Averni; sed revocare gradum, etc., — " It is easy to get dinner, but to wash up the things, this is the burden and toil ! " Virgil never spoke a truer word. The water was hot. We found it out the moment we put our hand in the dish. It was the same hand that the gas had flamed on. We reflected on the difference between dry heat and moist hotness. We could find no dish cloth. The grease would not come off the plates. There was no soap. We rubbed with our hand, which only gave the grease a circular form on the plates At length we got a newspaper, and, by vigorous rubbing, got the ware into a presentable condition. The tea-cups were better served. We found a napkin on the bottom of the spoon-drawer. It was a mercy ! There was no swill-bucket, and nowhere to throw the slops, and nobody that came for these superfluities in summer. The melon-rinds, the tomato fragments, the in- exorable meat-scraps, and the unmentionable sundries of a man's cooking, were heaped into the dish-pan. There they stood. Another newspaper served to rub down the BOOK-BUYING. 173 table. It was our last solitary meal. A week after- wards the fragments were found standing on the table where we had left them : the lamb-chops we had left and forgotten in the cupboard, and they had a way of making their presence and exigencies known. Indeed, our whole procedure in this case met with the disapprobation of the powers that be, nor can we say that they exactly suited us. But we have now a profound sense of a man's depend- ence on women for domestic comfort. Instead of think- ing that housekeeping is easy, — a mere nothing, — we admire and revere the genius that conducts so intricate a campaign as must be every single day's housekeeping — Eyes and Ears. BOOK-BUYING. No subtle manager or broker ever saw through a maze of financial embarrassments half so quick as a poor book-buyer sees his way clear to pay for what he must have. lie promises with himself marvels of retrenchment : he will eat less, or less costly viands, that he may buy more food for the mind. He will take an extra patch, and go on with his raiment another year, and buy books instead of coats. Yea, he will write books, that he may buy books. He will lecture, teach, trade : he will do any honest thing for money to buy books! The appetite is insatiable. Feeding does 174 BE EC HER AS A HUMOR /ST. not satisfy it. It rages by the fuel which is put upon it. As a hungry man eats first, and pays afterwai-d, so the book-buyer purchases, and then works at the debt afterward. This paying is ratlier medicinal. It cui-es for a time. But a relapse takes place. The same long- ing, the same promises of self-denial. He promises him- self to put spurs on both heels of his industry; and then, besides all this, he will somehow get along when the time for payment comes ! Ah ! this Somehow ! That word is as big as a whole world, and is stuffed with all the vagaries and fantasies that Fancy ever bred upon Hope. And yet, is there not some comfort in bujdng books, to be paid for? We have heard of a sot, who wished his neck as long as the worm of a still, that he might so much the longer enjoy the flavor of the draught ! Thus, it is a prolonged excitement of pur- chase, if you feel for six months in a slight doubt whether the book is honestly your own or not. Had you paid down, tliat would have been the end of it. There would have been no affectionate and beseeching look of your books at you, every time you saw them, saying, as plain as a book's eyes can say, " Do not let me be taken from you." . . . Only the other day we heard it said somewhere, " Why, how good you have been lately I I am really afraid that you have been carrying on mischief secretly." Our heart smote us. It was a fact. That very day we had bought a few books which we "could not do THE GOOD OF DISORDER. 175 without." Aftei- a while, you can bring out one volume, accidentally, and leave it on the table. '' Why, my dear, wlial a beautiful book ! Where (ltd you borrow it?" You glance over the newspaper, with the quietest tone you can command. " That ? oh ! that is m«ne. Have you not seen it befoi-e ? It has been in the house these two months ; " and you rush on with anecdote and incident, and point out the binding, and tliat peculiar trick of gilding, and every thing else you can think of ; but it will not do You cannot rub out that roguish, arithmetical smile. People may talk about the equality of the sexes I They are not equal. The silent smile of a sensible, loving woman will vanquish ten men. Of course you repent — and in time form a habit of repeating. — Slur Papeis. THE GOOD OF DISORDER. We spoke of bureaus. There is our own, for instance. It is a moderately good one, with a movable top, and a looking-glass attached. Our way of arranging is, to put every thing down on the top, just as it comes. Hers is just the other way. We treat it as we should the globe, and leave things just as they dropped. Books, combs, and brushes, a fish- ing-reel, a pamphlet, matches and lozenges, cologne and troches, a battle-hymn and letters, watch-cases and rib- 176 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. bons. Then one would know where to look if any thing were missing. Alas ! order steps up the moment we leave, and this beauteous disorder vanishes I It is distressing to every tender feeling of taste to open the first drawer. All is adjusted, nothing left to the im- agination. Every lace smooth, every one folded, flat, regular. So it will be to-morrow, so next week, and to the end. The next drawer is mine. There repose the snow-white shirts, the pile of handkerchiefs; and they repose like Egyptian dead, in rows and shelf-like order. Once in a while we thrust in a genuine touch of nature, that is said to make*kll men kin ; but a flat-iron does not take a wrinkle out of linen quicker than the order does out of the drawer. And so it is with the next, and the next. So it is with the closet, with parlor, and entries. The same rectangular fate presides in parlor and dining-room. Nay, it stealthily creeps into the very study. Let us, in a moment rash with desperation, say our soul's faith (though it be heresy) that no housekeeper — fore-ordained housekeeper — has any rights in a study. Here are we this morning, just returned after four days' absence. We left this room a paradise, we find it a purgatory. Our table was blossoming all over with a luxuriant and tangled abundance of letters, papers, scraps from news- papers, books, and books on books. It was a journal. Each day's deposit for weeks was there, almost with the regularity of geological strata. We could go back as in THE GOOD OF DISORDER. 177 a register, and recall the topics of each several day, until memory failed, and the lower strata of papers, the very primitive formations, went back to dim and remote times inexplorable. Like an ouion or tulip bulb, the table was constructed in layers. Fatal absence I Misplaced confi- dence 1 We returned to find every thing death-struck. All was order ! Our articles sorted, our letters filed, our scraps classified ; our pens collected and huddled like raw recruits, in awkward squads; the scissors, the knife, the pins, the ink, the mucilage, standing round like officers dressed for a parade day. A month will not suffice to bring back again the admired disorder, the graceful melange. And then the books ! . . . But, ah, the days are coming ! But seven days is it to spring ! Then in one more month, and all our ills will be healed. We shall send everybody to the country. We shall be sole monarch. Then, descending, we shall overturn the despotism of the parlors, and bring to the solitude of the house the joyful boon of disorder 1 We will forget to put any thing in its place The sofa shall sprout with strange things. Every corner be planted with new commodities. The book case door shall never be shut The chairs shall never have less than half a dozen books. Engravings shall lie in heaps Eight in the midst of manuscripts shall be seen bread and cheese and apple.q that had begun to be eaten ; the ashes shall heap itself in gray disorder, kindling-wood and waste 178 BEECH ER AS A HUMORIST. paper shall rufHe the hearth ; and every thing see every thing doing what it was never expected to do. Brooms we hate as we do a tyrant's rod. We will expel them ! Dust brushes are an utter abomination. We will drive them forth ! At present we think it meet to submit. But we snuff the balmy air that tells us that the vernal days are coming. To us they mean more than to any- body else. To all they mean grass, leaves, lambs, birds, flowers, and odorous smell of soil and vegetation. But to us they mean also domestic liberty, the end of tj'ran- nous order, the restoration of nature to the house, the undisturbed reign of joyous disorder I — Eyes and Ears. A CANNON-BALL IN THE HAT. When I was a lad of thirteen years, my father re- moved from a country town to Boston. Nothing of all its sights produced upon me such an impression as the ships. But the Navy Yard in the adjoining town of Charles- town, separated only by Charles River from Boston, was my especial wonder and glory. I became familiar with all its marvels. I crept down to the bottom of its huge and dismantled ships, I climbed up to the dqcks of those which were building in the covered ship-houses, I watched the construction of its famous stone dry-dock, I ranged along the silent mouths of its massive cannon. A CANNON-BALL IN THE HAT. 179 One day I visited some ill-constructed vaults where shot had been stoi-ed. The six and twelve pound shot were extremely tempting. I had no particular use for them. I am to this day puzzled to know why I coveted them. There was no chance in the house to roll them, and as little in the street. For base-ball or shinty they were altogether too substantial. But I was seized with an irresistible desire to possess one. As I had been well brought up, of course the first objection arose oa the score of stealing. But I disposed of that, with a patiiotic facility that ought long before this to have sent me to Congress, by the plea that it was no sin to steal from the government. Next, how should I convey the sliot from the yard without detection ? I tried it in my handkerchief. That was altogether too plain. I tried my jacket-pocket, but the sag and shape of that alarmed my fears. I tried my breeches-pocket, but the abrupt protuberance was worse than all. I had a good mind to be honest, since there was no feasible way of carrying it off. At length a thought struck me. Wrap a hand- kerchief about it, and put it in your hat. . . . The iron ball was accordingly swaddled with the hand- kerchief, and mounted on my head, and the hat shut over it. I emerged from the vault a little less courageous than was pleasant, and began my march toward the gate. Every step seemed a mile. Every man I met looked unusually hard at me. The marines evidently were susjoectiug my hat. Some sailors, leering, and roll- 180 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. ing toward the ships, seemed to look me through. The perspiration stood all over my face as an officer came toward me. Now for it ! I was to be arrested, put in prison, cat-o'-nine-tailed, or shot for aught 1 knew. I wished the ball in the bottom of the sea ; but no, it was on the top of my head. By this time, too, it bad grown very heavy : I must have made a mistake in selecting! I meant a six- pounder, but I was sure it must have been a twelve- pounder; and before I got out of the yard, it weighed twenty four pounds! 1 began to fear that the stiffness with which I carried my neck would excite suspicion; and so I tried to limber up a little, which had nearly ruined me, for the shot took a roll around my crown in a manner that liked to have brought me and my hat to the ground. Indeed, I felt like a loaded cannon, and every man and every thing was like a spark trying to touch me off. The gate was a great way farther off than I ever had found it before: I seeme